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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Chap. Copyrio^ht No. 



n^^s? 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THY WILL BE DONE 



THY WILL BE DONE 

The Blessedness of a Life in the 
Will of God 



MEDITATIONS FOR A MONTH 



BY 



ANDREW MURRAY 




New York Chicago" Toronto 

Fleming H. Revell Company 

Publishers of Evangelical Literature 



1 



83730 



rn 



Library of Congress 

Twu Ccwes Received 
DEC 4 1900 

Copyright entry 

SECOND COPY 

0«iiv»fecl to 
ORO£fi DIVISION 



^ 






^f. 



Copyright 1900 
by 
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 



• •••*•• 



• •• •"• ' 



PREFACE 

IN the will of God Creation has its origin, its exist- 
ence, its happiness, its power, its glory. 

In the will of God Redemption, too, has its origin, 
its maintenance, its blessedness, its power, its glory. 

To the will of God even so the life of grace in the 
heart owts its origin, its maintenance, its blessedness, 
its power, and its glory. 

In knowing and loving, in doing and bearing, in 
fulfilling all that will the spiritual life finds its 
growth, its rest, its joy, its strength, its fruitfulness, 
its everlasting blessedness. 

The one thing needful for a Christian is that he live 
in the will of God. 

Whether it be God's will in His Providence in time, 
or His Purpose in eternity, God's wuU in His Pre- 
cepts or His Promises, he that lives in the will of God 
will there find God Himself and all His salvation. 

May God teach us that as Plis will is the one cause 
and the power of all that He does in the showing 
forth of His glory, and of all that His Son did and 
does for our redemption, so the one thing His child 

5 



6 ' Preface 

needs is to prove that his whole life is the manifesta- 
tion of the power and glory of God's blessed will. 

With the prayer that God, by His Holy Spirit, may 
reveal this to each reader of this little book — Yours 

in Christ Jesus, 

ANDREW MURRAY. 



CONTENTS 



CHAP. 
I. 

II. 

ni. 

IV. 
V. 

VI. 

VII. 

VIII. 

IX. 

X. 

XI. 

XII. 
XIII. 
XIV. 

XV. 

XVI. 



THE WILL OF GOD, THE GLORY OF HEAVEN 

Matt. vi. 10, 

DOING god's will, THE WAY TO HEAVEN 

Matt. vii. 21, 

DOING god's will, OUR UNION WITH JESUS, 

Matt. xii. 50, 

DOING god's will, OUR FOOD, Johll iv. 32, 34 
THE WILL OF GOD, THE SALVATION OF THE PER- 
ISHING. Matt, xviii. 14, . 
NOT MINE OWN WILL. John V. 30, 

DOING THE WAY TO KNOWING. John vil. 1 7 
EVEN UNTO THE DEATH. Luke xxii. 42, 

lord! what wilt THOU? Acts ix. 6, . 

THE MAN AFTER GOD's OWN HEART. ActS 

xiii. 22, 

THE WILL OF THE LORD BE DONE. ActS Xxi, 

14, 

OF KNOWING god's WILL. ActS Xxii. 1 4, 
KNOWING AND NOT DOING. Rom. ii. 1 7-2 1, 
THE RENEWED MIND PROVING GOD'S WILL 

Rom. xii. 2, 

ACCORDING TO THE WILL OF GOD. Gal. i. 4, , 

GOD WORKING OUT HIS OWN WILL. Eph. 1, 

II, 

7 



PAGE 



II 



18 

24 
30 

36 
42 

48 

55 
61 

68 

74 

81 

87 

93 

99 

105 



Contents 



CHAP. 
XVII. 

XVIII. 

XIX. 

XX. 

XXI. 

XXII. 

XXIII. 

XXIV. 
XXV. 

XXVI. 

XXVII. 

XXVIII. 
XXIX. 

XXX. 



PAGE 



UNDERSTANDING THE WILL OF GOD. Eph. V. 

17, 

DOING THE WILL OF GOD FROM THE HEART, 

Eph. vi. 5-7, 

FILLED WITH THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD'S WILL, 
Col. i. 9, 

STANDING PERFECT IN ALL THE WILL OF GOD, 
Col. iv. 12, 

THE WILL OF GOD, YOUR SANCTIFICATION. 

Thess. iv. 3, 

UNCEASING THANKSGIVING THE WILL OF GOD. 

I Thess. V. i8, 

THE SALVATION OF ALL THE WILL OF GOD. 

Tim. ii. 4, 

LO, I COME TO DO THY WILL. Heb. X. 7, 
DOING THE WILL OF GOD OBTAINS THE PROM 

ISE. Heb. X. 36, .... 

GOD HIMSELF WORKING HIS WILL IN US 

Heb. xiii. 21, 

SUFFERING ACCORDING TO THE WILL OF GOD, 

I Pet. ii. 15, 

LI\aNG TO THE WILL OF GOD. I Pet. iv. 2, 
DOING god's will, THE SECRET OF ABIDING, 

I John ii. 17, 

PRAYING ACCORDING TO GOD's WILL. I John 



V. 14, 

XXXI. THE GLORY OF GOd's WILL. Rev. iv. 10, 



Thou sweet, beloved will of God, 

My anchor ground, my fortress hill, 

My spirit's silent, fair abode, 
In Thee I hide me and am still. 

O Thou, that wiliest good alone, 

Lead Thou the way — Thou guidest best; 

A little child, I follow on, 
And trusting, lean upon Thy breast. 

Thy beautiful, sweet will, my God, 
Holds fast in its sublime embrace 

My captive will, a gladsome bird. 
Prisoned in such a realm of grace. 

Within this place of certain good, 
Love evermore expands her wings, 

Or nestling in Thy perfect choice, 
Abides content with what it brings. 

Oh, lightest burden, sweetest yoke. 
It lifts, it bears my happy soul, 

It giveth wings to this poor heart; 
My freedom is Thy grand control. 

Upon God's will I lay me down. 
As child upon its mother's breast; 

No silken couch, nor softest bed, 
Could ever give me such deep rest. 

Thy wonderful, grand will, my God, 
With triumph now I make it mine; 

And faith shall cry a joyous Yes ! 
To every dear command of Thine, 

9 



THY WILL BE DONE 



THE WILL OF GOD, THE GLORY OF HEAVEN 

" Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth." — Matt. 
vi. 10. 

THE will of a man is the power by which he de- 
termines his actions, and decides what he is to 
do or not to do. In it is manifested his hidden, in- 
ward being, proving what his desires and dispositions 
are, foolish or wise, good or evil. The will is the rev- 
elation of character and life. What a man truly 
wills, he will infallibly seek to have done, either by 
himself or through others. 

In the will of God we have the perfect expression 
of His Divine perfection. Because He is a fountain 
of all beauty and blessedness. His will is inconceiv- 
ably beautiful and blessed. In it His Divine wis- 
dom and goodness make themselves known. 
Through it alone the creature can know his God ; in 
accepting and doing that will he finds the only and 
the sure way to fellowship and union with God. 

II 



12 Thy Will Be Done 

The glory and the blessedness of heaven consist in 
nothing but this, that God's will is done there in and 
by all. There is nothing to hinder God's working 
freely and fully all His blessed will in its countless 
hosts. To all that He wills for them of goodness and 
blessedness and service their whole being is surren- 
dered in submission and adoration. God lives in 
them and they in God. They are filled with the ful- 
ness of God. 

In the Lord's Prayer our Blessed Master teaches 
us to come to the Father with the wonderful petition, 
that His will may be done on earth, even as in heav- 
en! He calls us to open our hearts to think and 
lift them heavenwards in real desire and prayer. 
He bids us count upon an answer, and according to 
the power that worketh in us, expect the experience 
in such measure as we are fitted for ; God's will done 
in us and by us, on earth, as it is in heaven. The 
God who works it in heaven — is our Father, who 
delights to work it on earth. The blessedness of 
earth cannot possibly be other than that of heaven: 
let our hearts desire and delight to have the will of 
God done. 

Thy will he done, as in heaven, so on earth ! These 
chapters invite you to come and meditate on this 
petition, if so be the Father may, by His Holy Spirit, 



The Will of God 13 

show you the Divine beauty of His will, and the al- 
together heavenly blessedness of living in it. Let 
us begin by considering what God's will includes, 
that we may know aright what our Lord means 
and what w^e are to expect when we pray : Thy will 
be done ! 

There is, first, the will of God's holy Provide^tce, 
Ever}lhing that happens on earth comes to the child 
of God as the will of His Father. In His infinite 
wisdom God so overrules all the evil of men and 
devils, that in permitting it, He can take it up into 
His will, and make it work out His purposes. Jos- 
eph says of the sin of his brethren : ''Ye thought 
evil against me, but God meant it unto good." 
Jesus said to Pilate : " Thou couldest have no power 
against Me, except it were given thee from above.'' 
In everything that came on Him, He saw God's 
will: it was all the cup the Father gave Him. It 
is when the Christian learns to see God's will in 
everything that comes to him, grievous or pleasing, 
great or small, that the prayer. Thy will be done, 
will become the unceasing expression of adoring 
submission and praise. The whole world with its 
dark mysteries and life, with all its difficulties, will 
be illumined with the light of God's presence and 
rule. And the soul will taste the rest and the bliss 



14 Thy Will Be Done 

of knowing that it is every moment encircled and 
watched over by God's will, that nothing can sepa- 
rate it from the Love of which the will is the ex- 
pression. Happy the Christian who receives every- 
thing in Providence as the will of His Father. 

There is, next, the will of God's righteous Pre- 
cepts. Every command of our Father in heaven is 
a ray of the Divine will, radiant, to the eye that can 
see it, with all the perfection of the Divine nature. 
It comes as a proof of the Divine condescension, 
tenderly accommodating itself to our feebleness, as 
it puts the Divine will into human words, suited to 
our special capacity and circumstances. We all 
naturally connect the rays of light on earth with 
the sun from which they come. The more the 
Christian learns to link every precept with the In- 
finite Will of Love whence it comes, the more will 
he see the nobility and the joy of a life of entire 
obedience, the privilege and the honour of carrying 
out in human forms the perfect will of the Father in 
heaven. He then learns to say of God's precepts 
what first appeared too high : They are the rejoic- 
ing of my heart. And, Thy will be done, as in heav- 
en, becomes the secret inspiration of a glad fulfil- 
ment of all God's commands. 

Then comes — the will of God's precious Promises, 



The Will of God 15 

We often fail in the power of grasping or holding 
some promise, of which we fain would have the 
comfort, because we deal with it as a fragment, and 
do not connect it with the great whole of God's 
blessed will for us. Let every believer seek earnestly 
to realise what God's will in His promises is. It is 
His determination to do a certain thing, His engage- 
ment to do it for or in me, if I will trust Him. Behind 
the promise there is the faithful Almighty God wait- 
ing to fulfil it. What a strength it would give in 
prayer, what a confidence in expectation, to be quiet, 
and trace the promise to the Living Will, the Loving 
Heart, that wills to make it true to everyone that 
yields himself in trust and dependence. As, Thy 
will be done, in view of God's Providence, was the 
language of a glad submission, in view of His Pre- 
cepts, the surrender to a full obedience, so here, in 
relation to the Promises, it becomes the song of an 
assured hope. Thy will will be done, by Thyself 
in us, O our Father in heaven. 

One thought more — there is the will of God's 
Eternal Purpose. Our view of God's will in His 
Providence, His Precepts, His Promises, is often 
very much confined to ourselves. The believer, who 
through these longs to enter fully into all the will 
of God, will be led on into a wider and a deeper in- 



1 6 Thy Will Be Done 

sight into the glory of its counsels. He will learn 
something of that Great Purpose which filled the 
heart of God from Eternity, which reveals nothing 
less than the triumph of God's Redeeming Love in 
a world of sin. As he is led by the Holy Spirit 
into the great counsels of redemption, into the mean- 
ing of the sacrifice by which God has sought to ac- 
complish them, of the patience with which He is 
working out His plans, and the final triumph which 
is so sure and so glorious, he feels how little he has 
realised his position or the meaning of this prayer. 
Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth! be- 
comes the expression of his fellowship with God in 
His wondrous carrying out of His everlasting coun- 
sel of grace, of his intercession on behalf of a per- 
ishing world, of his joyful anticipation of all flesh 
seeing the glory of God. He feels himself as a 
mote floating in the sunlight of God's presence. He 
knows himself an instrument^ a vessel, a member of 
the body of Christ, through which God's glory is 
working out His perfect will. 

Believer, come and listen. This prayer needs your 
whole heart. It needs the teaching, yea, the in- 
dwelling of Jesus Christ in the heart, to be able to 
pray it aright. It calls for a heart, a will, a life, 
entirely given up to the Father in heaven, by His 



The Will of God 17 

Spirit dwelling in us, to understand it aright. Let 
the glory of God doing His will in us and through 
us be met by nothing less than a will wholly given 
up to do His will on earth as it is done in heaven. 
Study how God's will is done in heaven. Yield 
yourself to do it even so on earth. 



II 

DOING GOD'S WILL, THE WAY TO HEAVEN 

" Not every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall 
enter unto the kingdom of heaven ; but he that doeth the 
will of My Father which is in heaven." — Matt. vii. 21. 

WE have seen that the will of God constitutes 
the glory of heaven. Heaven is nothing 
but the unhindered manifestation of the working of 
God's will, the outshining of His hidden glory in 
what He does. The inhabitants of heaven owe all 
their glory to God's working His will of love in 
them, and all their happiness to their working it 
out in His service. The petition in the Lord's 
Prayer teaches us to long and ask that earth may 
becom.e like heaven, and that His will may be done 
here even as there. From this truth that of our 
text follows naturally. The only way to be fit to 
enter heaven must be, to do the will of God here 
on earth. Every thought of heaven that does not 
lead US to do the will of God is a vain imagination. 

There are multitudes of Christians who have never 
seen this. They think that the way to heaven 

18 



The Way to Heaven 19 

is found in pious desires and religious duties, in 
trusting Christ for mercy, and seeking to be kept 
from gross sin. But the thought that Christ puts 
here, that only those who love to do the will of God 
can enter heaven — has never taken possession of 
their mind or heart. And yet our Lord makes the : 
difference between the reUgion of prayer and pro- 
fession, and the religion of obedience and perform- 
ance, as plain as words can make it. Not every one 
that saith tmto ile, Lord, Lord — that prays to ]\Ie 
and professes to acknowledge and honour 'Me as 
Saviour; but he that doeth the Vv'ill of 2\Iy Father 
in heaven — he alone shall enter the kingdom of 
heaven. It is the Father's presence and the Father's 
will in heaven that makes heaven what it is : doing 
the Father's will on earth is the onh' conceivable 
way of entering heaven ; nothing else can give the 
capacity for enjoying it. There must always be 
harmony between a life and its environment. To 
enter the heaven of God's will, without a nature 
that loves and does God's will, is an impossibility. 

But whence then comes the terrible mistake that 
so many make, who think that they are honestly 
longing and striving to get to heaven? Let us try 
and answer this question. In everything that exists 
there is an outVv'ard form or shape in which it m.ani- 



10 Thy Will Be Done 

fests itself and an inward power or life which con- 
stitutes its true nature or being. It is thus with 
heaven and our thought of it. Men regard it as a 
place full of brightness and glory and happiness — 
free from all sorrow or pain, full of all that can 
give rest and joy. And who would not wish to enter 
there? The most worldly hope to find a place in it 
when compelled to leave the present life. But they 
never think that what attracts them is only an ex- 
ternal image they form of heaven. And they know 
not that what constitutes the actual, essential glory 
of heaven, what really gives heaven and its inhabi- 
tants their rest and joy and everlasting song, is — 
the Presence of the Father who is in heaven, and the 
undisturbed supremacy of His Holy Will. Because 
in heaven God's will does everything, and is done 
by everyone, God's own blessedness fills all. Oh! 
the folly of thinking of entering heaven while they 
are utterly incapable of enjoying heaven. The 
Father in heaven, and His will on earth as in heaven, 
are not the desire or joy of their heart. 

The same error, in mistaking the outward for 
the inward, is made in regard to religion. God's 
words calls us to seek and to strive, to listen to 
God's truth, to pray and believe, to forsake sin and 
follow after that which is good. And so men seek 



The Way to Heaven 21 

to put their trust in Christ, to confess Him, and 
do many things in His name, and think that this 
is rehgion. And all the while they forget that 
the inner spiritual reality of true religion is this — 
the knowing, and loving, and doing of the Father's 
will as their one desire and delight. They know 
not that it is to work this that Jesus is a Saviour 
from sin; that this is the only proof that our faith 
is true; that by this path alone can the entrance to 
heaven be found. 

When this is preached^ many a one comforts him- 
self with the thought of God's mercy. Did not 
Christ just come for those \vho had sinned, and had 
not done God's Will? He did indeed, blessed be 
God ! But not for those who continue in sin, and 
do not make the will of God the object of their life. 
Our sin and misery was that we had fallen out of 
the will of God into our own will and the will of 
Satan. Christ came with the one object of redeem- 
ing lis from the power of our own will, and giving 
us a new nature and His Holy Spirit, to enable us 
here on earth to love and do God's will. Without 
this, our Lord assures us, there can be no thought of 
our entering heaven. The same righteous grace 
that in Justification receives the ungodly into favour 
without w^orks, through faith alone, for the sake 



22 Thy Will Be Done 

of Christ and His work, will in the great day take 
the works and the life into account as the proof of 
the reality of faith and r.n^^on to Christ, and of the 
fitness for entering heaven. As we are saved zvith- 
out works, we are created in Christ Jesus for good 
works, which God afore prepared that we should 
walk in them. Without these there can be no en- 
trance into heaven; they are indispensable. The 
Master's words are plain and decisive : He that doeth 
the will of My Father in heaven, shall enter into the 
kingdom of heaven. (Study carefully Matt. xvi. 
2y, XXV. 31-46; Rom. ii. 6-7; 2 Cor. v. 10.) 

Christ came from heaven to show us that doing 
the will of the Father is the one mark of a son of 
God, and to save us into doing that will. True con- 
version is turning away from our self-will and giving 
ourselves to the will of God as our duty and our 
only blessedness. I ask every believer who reads 
this to inquire, and say whether he thinks that 
the doing of the Father's will, as the one object of 
Christ's salvation, and the one preparation for enter- 
ing heaven, has taken the place in his life and faith 
and conduct, that it had in the life and conduct and 
teaching of Jesus Christ. Read the question over 
again, and pause ; it is worth while giving a careful 
answer. 



The Way to Heaven 23 

All salvation on earth or in heaven is — doing 
the will of God. If we find that this blessed truth 
has never shone with its full heavenly light into our 
souls, let us at once turn to our Lord Jesus and ask 
Him to teach us. Let us give ourselves up to it, 
to study, to believe, to practice, to rejoice in it. Let 
us each day choose the will of God, His whole will, 
and nothing but His will, to have rule over us and 
dwell within us. The living Father whose love can 
make it our blessedness, through the living Christ, 
who loves to teach it us and work it in us, will en- 
able us to do His will. 



Ill 

DOING GOD'S WILL, OUR UNION WITH JESUS. 

'' Whosoever shall do the will of My Father which is in 
heaven, the same is My brother, and sister, and mother." — 
Matt. xii. 50. 

HOW many Christians there are who long great- 
ly for a more intimate fellowship with the 
Lord Jesus. The thought of a fuller experience of 
His love, of His abiding presence, of His mighty 
power to save from sin and self, greatly attracts 
them. They often wonder that the longings and 
the prayers of years appear to avail so little. They 
are ready to turn to anyone who they think can help 
them to discover the secret of what they have sought 
in vain, the full manifestation in their heart of the 
love and the power of Christ. Come, my reader, 
turn to-day to our Blessed Lord Himself, and let 
Him tell you His open secret. The way into the 
most intimate union with Christ is very simple: 
doing the will of His Father. Of one who does this 
He says: the same is My brother, and sister, and 

mother. 

24 



Our Union with Jesus 25 

What does this mean? A brother or a sister is 
one who is born of the same father, shares the same 
love, and home, and care; bears in some measure 
the same Hkeness in disposition and character; is 
bound to his other brothers and sisters by these ties 
in a common love and intercourse. When Christ 
calls one of us a brother or sister, it mieans nothing 
less. Like Him we are born of God; the Father's 
life, and love, and likeness are in us, as in Him. As 
the Elder Brother, He gives to us and shares with us 
all He has ; He pours out on us all the love with 
which the Father loves Him. He is not ashamed 
to call us brethren. He delights in our relationship 
to Him, in our welfare, in our society. He only lives 
to find His happiness in us, and in what He can do 
for us. The one thing He longs for is that we 
should knov/ and claim our relationship, should come 
to Him and be free with Him as no brother or sister 
ever was. 

Let us pray for the quickening of the Holy Spirit 
to make all this a reality. Just think of what a joy 
would come into the believer's life if he truly realised 
this : Jesus loves me as a brother, yes me, just as I 
am, all unworthy and sinful. He loves me as a 
brother. No elder brother ever watched over a weak 
younger brother so tenderly as m^y Elder Brother 



26 Thy Will Be Done 

watches over me. He v/ants me to know it. He 
gives the command : '' Say to My brethren, I ascend 
to My Father and your Father/' He wants me to 
knovv^ it; He longs that I should live with Him as 
a brother in the Father's presence; He is able and 
willing to make the possibihty a reality. He in- 
vites us to come and say in tender reverence, O my 
Holy Elder Brother — I dare scarce say, and yet I 
miay and I will — I am Thy brother; Thou art my 
Brother. He can enable us to realise it, and abide in 
His presence all the day and every day. 

And what is the disposition of heart that can claim 
the blessing and abide in it. Read again : '' Who- 
soever shall do the will of My Father which is in 
heaven, the same is My brother, and sister, and 
mother/' The Lord opens here to us the deepest 
secret of His own Hfe as Son of God on earth. He 
came as man to prove the blessedness and the glory 
of doing the will of the Father, In His human life 
this was the one disposition that lay at the root of 
His power to conquer sin, to satisfy God, and to 
save us. Doing the will of God is the only pos- 
sible way, on earth or in heaven, of pleasing 
Him. 

Thinking as God thinks, loving what God loves, 
willing as God wills, doing what God says — how 



Our Union with Jesus 27 

could we think that there is any way but this to 
the fellowship or the favour of God. Of Himself 
Jesus said : " I have kept the commandments of My 
Father and abide in His love." The law for the 
Elder Brother is the unchangeable law for all the 
children: doing the Father's will is the only true 
mark of being a child. And so it is the one con- 
dition of being admitted to the full experience of a 
walk in all the joy that the Brotherhood of Jesus 
can bring. Doing the will of the Father is the bond 
of union with Jesus. 

The converse is also true. Union with Jesus 
gives the power to do the will of the Father. We 
begin with '' willing to do His will/' and do it as 
far as we know and can. When this is really done 
with the whole hearty we come and claim the promise 
of being admitted consciously into the love and so- 
ciety of the Elder Brother. In true intercourse with 
Him, studying His example, drinking in His Spirit, 
receiving His strength, we get larger insight and 
greater love of God's will, and begin to long to live 
in it wholly even as Jesus did. And so we go from 
strength to strength, the doing the will fitting for 
the brother-life, and the brother-life fitting for the 
doing of the will. In ever closer union with Him, 
the Elder Brother imparts to us, in ever deeper meas- 



28 Thy Will Be Done 

ure, the secret of His own blessed Hfe in the will of 
God. 

And what is that secret ? It is found in the words 
our Lord so frequently uses — '' the will of My 
Father, which is in heaven.'' Christ was only able 
to do and suffer as He did, because it was all to Him 
each moment the will of a loving Father. The will 
of the Father was nothing but the experience of the 
love of the Father : therefore He delighted, therefore 
He was able, to do it. Many Christians never learn 
to understand the difference between the Law of 
God and the Will of God. The law is given by 
a Ruler, and when embodied in a statute book may 
be kept or broken, with very little thought of per- 
sonal relationship to the Law-giver. For this 
reason the Law has no power to secure obedience. 
Christ speaks of the Will as the Will of the Father — 
the expression of a personal living comm.unication, 
in which the Father's voice and presence is ever 
known, and the Will never for a moment separated 
from Him whose it is. It was the ever-present Love 
of God shovving His will, and the ever-blessed en- 
joyment of that Love, that enabled Christ to be 
obedient even unto death. It is this alone can enable 
us to do the Father's will. The grace once for all 
. to yield ourselves to do only that will ; the faith to 



Our Union with Jesus 29 

believe that in the fellowship and by the power of 
Christ such a life is possible; the joyful devotion to 
Him to walk as led by His hand, and like Him 
to do the Father's will; these all come as a believer 
seeks to know the life of a brother of the First Be- 
gotten Son. 

It is indeed a change in the life of a believer, vvhen 
he fully grasps and experiences the difference be- 
tween the Law of God and the Will of the Father. 
He sees how^ the only pozuer to do the will is the 
unceasing experience of the Father's presence, His 
loving voice, His guiding eye, His inspiring love. 
He sees how that was the life Jesus lived, how noth- 
ing less is the life Christ lives in us. He learns 
to understand how doing the Father's will is the one 
blessing into which faith is to lead us, the one secret 
of abiding union with Christ Jesus. Go out, my 
soul, into thy w^ork this day, and let thy life be trans- 
figured by the one thought : Like Jesus, with Jesus, 
in Jesus I live to do the Father's will. And as you 
fail, or fear to fail, just whisper: '^ O my Lord, my 
Elder Brother, Thou and I, Thou and I, are we not 
one in doing the Father's will." 



IV 

DOING GOD'S WILL, OUR FOOD 

" I have meat to eat that ye know not of. My meat is to 
do the will of Him that sent Me, and to accomplish His 
work." — John iv. 32, 34. 

WHEN tempted in the wilderness by Satan to 
satisfy His hunger by a miracle Christ an- 
swered: Man shall not live by bread alone, but by 
every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. 
The life is more than bread. God's word, received 
and obeyed, is the true nourishment of our life. 
In the Beatitudes Christ spake : Blessed are they that 
hunger and thirst after righteousness, after the 
doing of what is right ; they shall be satisfied. And 
so He says here of Himself that to do the will of 
Him that sent Him, and to accomplish His work, 
is the m^eat that He eats, the food by which He lives. 
\, The hidden manna is God's will ; to do it is to eat and 
'^ live. Let us think what this eating teaches us. 

Eating means the maintenance of life. — All cre- 
ated life must be supported by nourishment from 
without, if it is not to die. And the food must ever 

30 



Our Food 31 

be in correspondence to the nature of the life it sus- 
tains, and the organs provided for receiving it. Our 
physical life is fed from the life of nature. Our 
spiritual life can only be maintained out of the eternal 
life that is in God. There is no zvay for oiir re- 
ceiving that life day by day but by doing the zinll of 
God. The life of God reveals and communicates 
itself only in His will. In its first beginning life 
is always a gift. But its maintenance is always con- 
nected with action and growth. It is doing God's 
Zinll, and accomplishing His work that will secure to 
the Christian the daily continuance in the Divine 
Hfe. 

Eating means appropriation. — Our body receives 
from the outer world, of which it is a part, that by 
which it lives, the constituent elements by which its 
life is sustained. These can nourish us in no other 
way but by being taken up into our system, assimi- 
lated and made a very part of our ovvm selves. Even 
so in the spiritual life. As we have said already, the 
life of God acts and m.anifests itself through the Vv^ill 
of God. And it is only by truly and fully appropri- 
ating that zvill, taking it into our system, wholly as- 
similating it, and m.aking it a part of our own being, 
by doing it, that the life can be m.aintained in us. 
The life is a hidden spiritual mystery ; the will is its 



32 Thy Will Be Done 

concrete expression, capable of being known, and 
accepted or rejected. And because the will is the 
Divine power in action, so there is no possible way 
of assimilating the Divine will but by action on our 
/ part, that is, by our doing it. It is not the knowl- 
edge, or the admiration, or the approval of the will 
of God, but the doing of it that alone feeds the heav- 
enly life. It is only by doing that I really make it 
my own. '' My meat is to do His will." 

Eating means the renewal and increase of strength. 
— We do not eat just enough to maintain a bare 
existence; we desire to have food, both in quantity 
and quality, sufficient to give us strength and vigour 
for our work. Doing God's will is the sure way to 
become strong. Many Christians seek their strength 
in prayer, in faith, in the promises, in fellowship. 
They complain of their feebleness. They have never 
learnt that Christ made doing the will of the Father 
His meat; it was this that was rewarded with the 
Divine strength for all He had to do. He felt that 
He had but one thing to do in the world — to accom- 
plish the work for which God had sent Him ; as He 
did it He received new strength for what He still had 
to do. It is this His disciples need. The whole 
power of God works in His will. As I appropriate 
that will, and know I am doing the very thing God 



Our Food 23 

is willing for me, its powers work in me. Doing 
the will of God brings heavenly strength. 

Eating means satisfaction. — God has so created 
us that a sense of need of hunger, impels us to seek 
food, and makes our partaking of it an enjoyment 
and a source of satisfaction. '' Bless the Lord, who 
satisfieth thy mouth with good things ; so that thy 
youth is renewed like the eagle's." '' He satisfieth 
the^hungry soul.'' It is feeding on the will of God 
that gives this Divine satisfaction. The will of God 
is His glory and perfection ; doing that will leads 
up into a wonderful fellowship and partnership with 
Himself. But that means more than just doing 
what is right or keeping the law. No, the right 
things may be done under the constraint of con- 
science or duty without bringing real satisfaction. 
It is only when what we do is done as the will of the 
Father, in the sense of His presence, in fellowship 
with Himself, and the loving desire to please Him, 
that it will give nourishment and strength and satis- 
faction to the soul. 

There are many Christians who mourn over their 
leanness and their feebleness. They study Christ's 
image and example, they seek in some things to be 
conformed to Him, and yet find so little either of 
the power or the joy of living as He lived. The 



34 Thy Will Be Done 

cause is simple. They do not feed on the food on 
which Christ fed. Two children, or two men, may 
be equally healthy, but the difference of food may 
make all the difference between their strength and 
success in the work of life. The believer has the 
same eternal life that was in Christ Jesus. But it 
needs the same daily food if there is to be any meas- 
ure of that conformity which God expects and has 
provided for. Our Lord tells us : My meat is that I 
do the will of Him that sent Me, He that eats of 
this meat shall have the life more abundant, shall be 
satisfied as with marrow and fatness. 

And what can be the reason of so much failure 
in feeding on this heavenly food? It m.ay be that 
the Church has not taught it as clearly as was need- 
ed. Or that we heard and heeded not. Or that 
when we did heed, we were deceived by the lie of 
Satan that this was too hard a path. And yet the 
Lord has said it so plainly: The will of God is the 
glory of heaven ; the doing of God's will ought to be 
our great prayer on earth. The doing of God's will 
is the only pass to heaven, the only mark of the 
family likeness in the home of Jesus. The doing of 
God's will the only food on which a child of God 
can thrive and be able to accomplish the work the 
Father has given us to do. The doing of God's 



Our Food 35 

will our daily food ; we must go back upon our past 
life and see if this has been what we have been feed- 
ing on. And if not, we must believe that a change 
of diet, a return to the simple, heavenly fare on which 
the Son of God lived His life and did His work, will 
restore us to health and make the work of God our 
joy and our Hfe. 

Soul ! pray for a great hunger for the will of God, 
as natural and as continual as for your daily bread. 
Beg, even if it were at first but for a crumb of this 
heavenly bread from the Father's table, God showing 
you His will for you, and enabling you to do it for 
Him. It may be the beginning of such a change in 
your life. The work you have done for God, at 
your choice and in your way, and the commandments 
you have tried to obey, may all become to you the 
loving will of the living Father, living fellowship with 
the living God. Instead of eating the bread you 
had to find yourself you will say: '' I have meat to 
eat ye know not of " — the will of the Father made 
known and performed day by day. 



V 

THE WILL OF GOD, THE SALVATION OF THE 
PERISHING 

" Even so it is not the will of your Father which is in 
heaven, that one of these little ones should perish." — Matt. 
xviii. 14. 

OUR Lord Jesus here uses the words, little ones, 
both of the children of whom He spoke in 
verses 2 and 3, and also of the feeble and simple 
ones among His people : " the little ones who believe 
in Me '' (verse 6). He says that just as surely as a 
man rejoices over one lost sheep, that he has found 
again, so the Father does not will that any one, even 
of the feeblest and most despised, should perish. 
When our Lord spoke elsewhere of His doing the 
Father's will, it was specially the will of God to save 
the lost that He meant : '' I am come down from 
heaven, not to do Mine own will, but the mil of Him 
that sent Me, And this is the will of Him that sent 
Me^ that of all that which He giveth Me I should 
lose nothing. For this is the will of My Father, that 
every one that beholdeth the Son, and believeth on 

36 



Salvation of the Perishing 37 

Him, should have eternal life/' The will of the 
Father is the salvation of men. x\ll the leadings of 
God's will, down to the minutest details of the life 
of every hour, have their root in this great fountain 
of redeeming love : that not even one of the little 
ones should perish. Christ's coming dow^n from 
heaven, all His speaking and doing. His living and 
suffering and dying, it all had its unity in this — it 
was the revelation of God's will to save, and of 
Christ's surrender of Himself to do that will in sav- 
ing all the Father had given Him. 

When we yield ourselves to do the Father's will, 
must the will of God for the salvation of men be to 
us, as it was to Christ, the main object of our Hfe, 
the one thing we do ? It must indeed. The life that 
was in Christ is the same life that is in us. The 
glory of the Father; the blessedness of being the 
channels of the Father's love ; the entire surrender to 
the one work the Father wants done in the world ; all 
these claim our devotion as much as they did that of 
Christ. There is an infinite difference in the part 
He took and the part we are to take in carrying out 
that will: but the ivill itself is to be as much the joy 
and the aim of our life as it was of His. The larger 
our apprehension of God's will, and the more com- 
plete our surrender to it in all its breadth, to be 



38 Thy Will Be Done 

wholly possessed of it^ the more surely will we grow 
to the stature of the perfect man in Christ Jesus, 
and reach our Christian maturity. 

It is just here that so many Christians fail. They 
seek to know the will of God only in its minute de- 
tails concerning themselves, and so they live prac- 
tically under a law consisting in commandments and 
ordinances. Their own personal happiness is the 
first thing; obedience and sanctification are subordi- 
nate to these, as means to an end ; the selfish element 
infects and enfeebles all their religion. They have 
no conception of the nobility, of the heavenly ro3^alty 
of spirit, that comes to the man who forgets and loses 
himself, as he gives himself away to that will of God 
for the salvation of men. It was that will sent 
Christ into the world. It was that will animated 
Him during His whole life. It was for the breath- 
ing that will into our hearts and lives that the Holy 
Spirit came. It is in the being possessed by that 
will, even as Christ w^as possessed by it, yielding our- 
selves to the mastery of Divine Love, that the image 
of God is restored in us, so that we may live only 
to love and to bless, even as God does. 

'' It is not the will of your Father which is in 
heaven that one of these little ones should perish." 
What inspiration these words have given to God's 



Salvation of the Perishing 39 

workers on behalf of orphans, of waifs and strays, 
of children in India perishing from famine, or in 
Africa from slavery. What courage to thousands 
of teachers for the little ones of whom they had 
charge. What patience and strength it has breathed 
into the hearts of those who have had to deal with 
the neglected and the outcast in every land. It 
w^as their joy and hope that they knew that they 
were doing the zvill of God. Yea, more, they knew 
that the mighty will of God was working itself out 
through them. These all have experienced how 
blessed it was at times to look away from their own 
little and limited interests and duties, and to cast 
themselves into that mighty stream of God's loving 
will, which is slowdy but surely working out His 
blessed purpose. There they found themselves in 
fellow^ship with God's own son, and with the saints 
of all ages, whose one glory it had been that 
they had known and fulfilled the redeeming will of 
God. 

What a change it would bring into the life of 
many a believer to know and love this will of the 
Father, to lose self, and sacrifice all in order to be 
mastered and consumed by its blessed fire. If you 
would thus know it, reader, and be possessed by it, 
you must make it a definite object of study and 



40 Thy Will Be Done 

desire. Seek in meditation to get some right impres- 
sion of its glory. Ask for the Holy Spirit's teach- 
ing to give you a spiritual vision of the infinite 
energy^ of the Divine Love, as it wills nothing but 
good to every one of its creatures. It needs time 
and thought and prayer; it needs the giving up of 
all our self-satisfaction with our limited views of 
God's will ; it needs an opened, thirsty heart longing 
to be filled with the fulness of God and His will, if 
we are in our measure to have this will of love dwell 
in us and possess us. It needs above all, the in- 
dwelling of the Christ, in whom that will realised 
and manifested itself, to make us partakers of His 
own Spirit and disposition. We then can know 
something of that infinite will of love working itself 
out through us, filling the little vessel of our will 
out of its own living stream, and making the will of 
God indeed our will. 

We have seen that it is doing the will of God 
that is the glory of heaven, the way to heaven, our 
likeness to the Elder Brother, and the food of our 
spiritual life. Let us begin doing the will of God 
in this aspect too, really giving ourselves to Him 
for this saving of the lost. It will waken within 
us the capacity of apprehending better the glory 
of the Divine will that none of the little ones 



Salvation of the Perishing 41 

should perish, and the Divine privilege of our being 
made partakers of it. There is no other way for 
us to the fellowship of God but to have one will 
with Him. And there is no way to this but through 
Christ and the participation of His Spirit. As we 
apprehend intelHgently w^ho and what the Christ is, 
and His true life, the Son come and given up to 
work out the Father's will and love, and accept none 
other but this Christ as our Lord and our hfe, the 
hope will arise that this redeeming will can master 
us too as its vessels and channels^ that we too can go 
through the world filled with a Divine life, the Divine 
will inspiring and energising our will, and life 
passing out from us to those who are perishing. 



VI 

NOT MINE OWN WILL 

"I can of Myself do nothing: as I hear, I judge; and 
My judgment is righteous; because I seek not Mine own 
will, but the will of Him that sent Me/* — John v. 30. 

THE Will of God is the power by which the 
universe exists from moment to moment. It 
is by the unceasing active exercise of His will that 
the sun shines, and that every lily is clothed with 
beauty. There is no goodness, or strength, or 
beauty, but as He wills it. The glory and blessed- 
ness of heaven are nothing but the working of His 
will. The hosts of heaven live with their wills 
turned and opened to Him, and find their happiness 
in allowing His will to do its perfect work in them. 
When the Blessed Son became man to lead us in the 
way to God, He told us that the whole secret of His 
life was, not doing His own will, but yielding Him- 
self so to do the will of the Father, that His will 
should receive and work out that which the will of the 
Father worked in Him. He said that He had been sent 
and that He had delighted to come, for the one pur- 

42 



Not Mine Own Will 43 

pose, with His human will and His human body, to 
do not His own will, but the will of the Father. He 
set us the example of a man, a true man, finding 
His blessedness and His way to God's glory in the 
absolute surrender to God's will. He thus showed 
us what the destiny was for which man was created, 
and what the new life He was to bring His people. 
In such entire dependence on God, as to do nothing 
of Himself, and to judge nothing but as He heard 
from the Father^ He was able always to give a right- 
eous judgment. He could count upon God to 
give Him all the wisdom and the strength He need- 
ed, to work out His own will perfectly in Him. All 
for the one simple reason : '' Because I seek not Mine 
own will, but the will of Him that sent Me." 

" Not Mine own will, but the will of Him that 
sent Me ! " But had our Lord Jesus an own will, 
a will different from the Father's, that He needed 
to say: Not My will? Had He a will that needed 
to be denied? Undoubtedly. But was not such a 
will sin? By no means. Just this was the glory 
of the creation of man that he had a self-hood, an 
own will, a power of self-determination, by which 
he was to decide what he should be. This was not 
sin, that man had his own desire and thought and 
will. Without this he could not be a free creature. 



44 Thy Will Be Done 

He had a will, with which to decide whether he 
should act according to the will of God or not. Sin 
only came when man held to his own will as creature 
in opposition to the will of God. As man, made like 
unto us in all things, " in all points tempted Hke as 
we are, yet without sin," Christ had a human will; 
for instance, to eat when He was hungry, or to 
shrink from sufifering when He saw it coming. We 
know how in the temptation in the wilderness, He 
kept the former, in the prospect of His death, the 
latter, in perfect subjection to the Father's will. 
(Matt. iv. 4; Luke xii. 50; John xii. 2y,^ It is just 
this that gives its infinite worth to His sacrifice; it 
was the unceasing sacrifice of His human will to the 
Father. '' I seek not Mine own will, but the will of 
Him that sent Me." 

These words reveal to us the inmost meaning of 
Christ's redemption. They teach us what the life 
is for which we were created, and out of which we 
fell in Paradise. They show us wherein the sinful- 
ness of that fallen state consists out of which Christ 
came to deliver us: He seeks to free us from our 
self-will. They reveal to us the true creature-life 
and the true Son-life, perfect oneness of will with 
God's will. They open to us the secret power of 
Christ's redeeming work — atoning for our self-will 



Not Mine Own Will 45 

by His loyalty at all costs to God's will; and the 
true nature of the salvation and the Hfe He gives 
us — the will and the power to say: I delight to 
do Thy will, O God. Every spirit seeks a form in 
which to embody itself: these words give the 
highest revelation of the Hfe in which the Spirit 
that was in Christ embodied itself in Him, and 
embodies itself in all who seek truly and fully to 
accept His salvation to the uttermost. I seek not 
My will, but the will of Him that sent Me, is the 
keynote of the only life that is well-pleasing to the 
Father on earth, and fits for His fellowship in 
heaven. 

How little God's children know the Christ He 
has given them. And how little the true nature of 
the salvation Christ came to bring. How many 
there are who have never been taught that salva- 
tion out of self-will into doing God's will is alone 
true blessedness. And how many who, if they 
think they know it as a truth, never set themselves 
to seek this first as the tiue entrance into the king- 
dom of God and His righteousness. And yet this 
is in very deed what Christ revealed, and promised, 
what He secured on Calvary, and bestowed from 
heaven in the Holy Ghost. How can we become 
possessed of this blessed life? 



46 Thy Will Be Done 

I have pointed out previously how great the dif- 
ference is between the idea of the law of a State, as 
containeH in a statute book, and the will of a King to 
whom one stands in a personal relationship. If we 
would truly, however distantly, follow, in Christ's 
footsteps, we must stand with Him in the same 
close personal relationship to the Father. Without 
this the most earnest efforts to do the Father's will 
must prove a failure. When our Lord 'so often 
spoke of " The will of My Father, which is in heav- 
en," He wanted us to understand that it was the liv- 
ing personality and love that was at once motive and 
power for the obedience. When He spoke '' of 
the will of Him that sent Me,'' He showed that it was 
not only the consciousness of having a work, but the 
desire of pleasing the One who sent Him, that was 
the mainspring of all He did. We need the sense of * 
the presence and nearness of the God whose will we 
are to do as much as our Lord did. Separate the 
thing you have to do from Him whose will it is, and 
it becomes a burden and an impossibility. Live in 
the faith that He has sent you, that it is His living 
loving will, over which He watches, which He Him- 
self even works out, that you are doing — instead of 
its being a burden you are to carry, it becomes a 
power that carries you. The will of the Father is 



Not Mine Own Will 47 

such a beautiful, wise, gentle, loving will, that to 
know it as the breathing out of the heart of God, 
makes it an infinite attraction and delight. 

And how can we enter into this experience of the 
Father's nearness, and thus be able to do everything 
as His will? There is only one way. Jesus Christ 
must work it in us. And that not as from without, 
strengthening our faculties or assisting our efiforts. 
No, this blessed doing of the Father's will is the 
mark of His life as Son. He can work it in us, as 
we yield ourselves wholly and receive Him truly to 
dwell in us. It is right and needful that we should 
set ourselves with all earnestness and m.ake the at- 
tempt. It is only by its failure that we really learn 
how entirely He must and wall do all. So insepara- 
bly is this '' seeking not Mine own w^ill, but the will 
of Him that sent Me,'' connected with Jesus Christ, 
that it is only when He comes in and manifests Him- 
self in the heart and dwells there^ that He can work 
this full salvation in us. " Blessed are they that 
hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall 
be filled/' 



VII 

DOING THE WAY TO KNOWING 

*' If any man willeth to do His will he shall know of the 
teaching, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of My- 
self." — John vii. 17. 

THERE was great division among the Jews as 
to who Christ really was, and the Divine au- 
thority of the truth He taught. They wanted some 
sign as a clear proof that He was really come from 
God. Christ's answer tells them that the proof de- 
pended upon the state of their heart. 

A man who wants the Divine evidence of Christ's 

mission, while he is not ready to do God's will, seeks 

, for it in vain. A man whose will is set upon doing 

\ God's will, as far as he knows it, is alone in the fit 

state for receiving further Divine illumination. 

Our Lord says : '' If any man willeth to do His 
will, he shall know of the teaching whether it be of 
God." He speaks of two things: the will of God 
we are to do, and the teaching about God we are 
to know. He tells us the second is entirely de- 
pendent upon the first. As we will to do, we shall 

48 



Doing the Way to Knowing 49 

be able to know. It is the contrast and the connec- 
tion of precept and promise. Will, that is, be ready, 
be determined to do God's will, and you shall have 
Divine light and certainty as to all that Jesus has 
taught. The commands are simple and easy to be 
understood: he that seeks honestly to do them in 
the fear of God will learn to know the mystery of 
Christ. A will, a disposition set upon doing God's 
will, is the only organ for knowing God's truth. 

There are many Christians who complain of their 
lack of spiritual discernment. The promises of 
Christ in this very Gospel of St. John appear be- 
yond their reach. They would fain know that " the 
teaching is of God " ; they would like to experience 
and to feel that it is of Divine origin, and in Divine 
efficacy; that God Himself confirms and makes the 
words true as a living power. Take the promise of 
Christ in this chapter, of streams of living water 
flowing out of the believer. Or, later on, of the life 
more abundantly; of his followers not walking in 
darkness, but having the light of life; of our doing 
greater works than He had done ; of His manifesting 
Himself to us; of His and the Father's dwelling in 
us ; of our abiding in Him and He in us ; of our ask- 
ing what we will, and having it given to us. When 
a man really knows the teaching is from God, has the 



)^ 



50 Thy Will Be Done 

truth and power of God in it, it becomes easy to be- 
lieve it, and receives its fulfilment. To all believers 
who really long to have these promises shine with 
Divine light in their hearts, Christ's message comes 
to-day: it all depends upon the one thing, that you 
really will to do the will of God. Let us try and 
take hold of the lessons we need. 

Christ teaches us that in the growth of the Chris- 
tian life faith depends upon character. Just as, at 
conversion, there can be no faith without repentance, 
so on through life faith cannot grow or inherit the 
promises without a life given up to the doing of 
God's will. " Some having thrust from them a 
good conscience, have made shipwreck of the faith." 
The great reason why so many pray for an increase 
of faith and never get it, is that " the will to do God's 
will " has never taken the place it must have. The 
will rules the life ; the will is the index of the heart ; 
the whole man is to be judged by the will; unless 
there be a fixed resolve, a seeking with the whole will 
to do the will of God, there can be no growth in faith 
or the knowledge of the Divine truth to which it 
gives access. It is only as God's will is truly and 
fully taken up into my willing and doing that God 
can reveal Himself to me. 

God judges of our conduct by the will. Our Lord 



Doing the Way to Knowing 51 

says: " If any man willeth to do His will/' A be- 
liever may in his youth, through ignorance or feeble- 
ness, fail in doing the will; if He who searches the 
heart sees that he indeed wills, longs, and thirsts to 
do it, God will see in this the heart that is ready for 
spiritual light. '' If there first be a ready mind, it is 
accepted according to that a man hath, and not ac- 
cording to that he hath not." A believer, as in Rom. 
vii., may be able to say before God that he delights 
in the law of God after the inward man^ and yet 
have to mourn his terrible failure. If there be this 
will really to do, his failure will lead him on to see 
how Rom. viii. 2-4 is the deliverance from the law 
of sin in the members by the law of the Spirit of life 
in Christ Jesus, so that the righteousness of the law 
is fulfilled in them that walk after the Spirit. 
Christ's words are not meant for those who content 
themselves with the idea that they will to do the 
will while they do not press on to the life in the 
Spirit in which God works both to will and to do. 
It is the heart where the will is needed, with its 
whole strength, set upon God's will, that the Divine 
truth and power of Christ's teaching will be known. 
To do the will of God, the first step is thus to take 
it up into our will. The will of God is the 
heavenly treasure in the earthen vessel of our will 



52 Thy Will Be Done 

that the excellency of the power may be of God 
and not of us, and we so learn to trust God to work 
His own will in us and through us. I cannot re- 
peat the message too frequently or too earnestly ; the 
one object for which our will was given us, its true 
nobility and blessedness, is that with it we might 
take in and make our own the very will that God has. 
Ere ever I see all that that will implies, or feel that 
I have the power to perform it, let me regard it as 
the one thing God asks from me, the one thing I can 
do to please Him and become a partaker of His 
blessedness — day by day to accept, to worship, to 
will His blessed will, and to do it. He works in us 
both to will and to do. 

" Willing to do the will '' of God is the sure way 
to all grozvth in spiritual knowledge and experience. 
Actually doing all that is within the reach of my 
spiritual stature, and willing with the whole heart to 
do all that still appears beyond me, is the single eye 
which ensures the whole body being full of Divine 
light. The great reason why so much Bible study 
and prayer for Divine guidance is so fruitless is this 
— the heart is not in the right state for receiving 
God's teaching. Peter writes : '' Ye have purified 
your souls in obedience to the truth '' : it is the actual 
doing of God's will, with the entire surrender to God 



Doing the Way to Knowing 53 

to do it wholly and unceasingly, in the greatest things 
and in the least, that purifies the soul and inherits the 
promise, ^^ Blessed are the pure in heart, for they 
shall see God/' There is in the will of God such a 
Divine vi tality and energy that to the heart that wills 
and does it, not merely as a matter of duty or Chris- 
tian training, but because God has willed it, and even 
as God wills it, it becomes life and strength. The 
spiritual knowledge of God, of His presence. His 
power. His indwelling is given to the obedient : '' If 
a man love Me, he mill keep My zvord, and My 
Father will love him, and We will come unto him, 
and make Our abode with him/' 

Here is the way to a strong and joyful spiritual 
life. Unite thyself to the will of God; it will unite 
thee to Him, it \n\\ draw Him to thee. Will, with 
all thy will, what God wills; make this the chief 
exercise of thy spiritual life; as much as thou truly 
hast of God's will thou hast of God. Our Lord said : 
*' I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life." He was 
this because He came not to do His own will, but 
the will of the Father. This is the one way in which 
He will lead thee, the new and living way He opened 
up in His blood by doing God's will. This is the 
one truth He will be to thee, that in the doing of the 
Father's will is the union with Him perfected. This 



54 Thy Will Be Done 

is the one fife He will give thee, the life of God given 
in Christ, revealed and perfected by the will of God, 
as it is willed and done by us. 



vm 

EVEN UNTO THE DEATH 

" Father, if Thou be willing, remove this cup from Me ; 
nevertheless, not My will, but Thine be done.'' — Luke xxii. 
42. 

GETHSEMANE ! The inmost sanctuary of 
the life of our Lord and of His great re- 
demption. In some respects more mysterious than 
even Calvary. Of the visible suflfering and sacrifice 
on the Cross, the garden opens up the inner meaning 
and power. And of all the suffering of Gethsemane, 
" Not my will, but Thine be done " w^as the key. It 
shows us what th,£__sin was that made the great 
sacrifice a necessity, ojur_self-will ; what the dispo- 
sition was that gave the sacrifice its worth, the sur- 
r£nd€r~of-the_w:ill iQL receive God's will ; what the re- 
demption was that it effected, the conquest and 
atonement of our self-will; and what the salvation 
it actually brings, the impartation of a wull given 
up to God. Come, my soul, be still, and worship in 
holy fear, as thou seest what it cost thy Lord to 
speak the words thou so easily sayest. Learn from 

55 



56 Thy Will Be Done 

Him what fulness of meaning and blessing there IS 
to be found in them. 

The sin Christ dies for. — Why is the Son of God 
here on His way to the death of the Cross ? What is 
it that costs Him all this agony and suffering? It 
is sin that needs this sacrifice ; it is to take away sin 
that He is here. And the first part of His work in 
taking it away is that He Himself resist and conquer 
it. It is this death-struggle with sin that cost Him the 
agony. All through His life He had been '' tempted 
in all things like as we are, yet without sin.'' In 
this last hour of the powers of darkness they make 
one great assault on the very citadel of His being, 
and seek to tempt Him with the sorest of all tempta- 
tions — following His own will as His nature shrank 
back from the awful curse-bearing that was set be- 
fore Him. The scene reveals to us what is the deep- 
est root of all sin — the assertion of our self-will. It 
was this was the sin and the fall of Adam, It is this- 
is the source of all evil on earth. It is this is, in 
the believer, the hidden cause of all failure and dis- 
appointment. God's wilHs the living power through 
whjch His love communicates itself and its blessings 
to the creature. Man's will was meant to be the 
power by which he was intelligently to yield himself 
and co-operate with God in receiving and appropri- 



Even Unto the Death 57 

ating al! the Divine nature had to impart. Self- 
will, a will not yielded to God, is, in the whole uni- 
verse of things, the only thing that hinders God in 
revealing and communicating His blessedness to the 
creature. The cross is the proof of man's self-will 
in the refusal to bow to God's Son. Christ's agony 
in Gethsemane is the proof that it is this same sin 
that He came to conquer and cast out. 

The victory Christ won. — We often look upon the 
suffering of Christ, with the endurance of the curse 
and death of the Cross, as the cause of our salvation. 
Scripture teaches us to look to what gave that suf- 
fering and death its inner value — Christ's obedience. 
It was not merely in what He did or suffered, but 
in the spirit in which He acted^ that its infinite worth, 
its atoning merit, is to be found. During His whole 
life He had spoken of not doing His own will. 
Here He proves that He will do the will of the 
Father, even though it cost Him His life. Even un- 
to death He says. Not My will! And so through 
death, in dying to His own will. He teaches us what 
God claims as His right, and what alone can bring 
us to our true place of blessing — the entire losing 
and giving up of our will and life to God's will as 
the way into the life and glory of God. 

The atonement Christ accomplished. — And, now 



58 Thy Will Be Done 

tHe victory of Christ over man's self-will, how does 
it profit and save us? In two ways, as we regard 
Him in His substitution or His fellowship, as the 
Christ for us, as the Christ in us. In the former of 
these aspects. His victory over sin as self-will. His 
obedience unto death and His infinite acceptableness 
in the Father's sight, become ours the moment we 
believe in Him. As those who are united to Him by 
faith. His righteousness and merit, with all the 
Father's delight in Him on account of them, are 
made our very own : '' We are made the righteous- 
ness of God in Him." The sin of our self-will is 
blotted out. We are dealt with by God as if we 
never had sinned, counted righteous, and allowed to 
look up to God in His Beloved Son as altogether 
well-pleasing to Him. Were there but any due sense 
of the awfulness of the sin of self-will, especially 
in God's redeemed children, with what joy would 
the assurance of its being blotted out be welcomed. 
And how fervent would be the longing to know to 
the full the fruit of the victory Christ has achieved 
for us in freeing us from its power as well as its 
guilt. 

The salvation Christ bestows. — This is the second 
aspect of Christ's victory — He has freed us from 
the dominion of self-will. The very nature and es- 



Even Unto the Death 59 

sence of the salvation He imparts is, what was the 
very nature and essence of His own life, a delight 
and power f 0^0 God's will alone, Gethsemane 
teaches us the way to receive the full experience of 
the deliverance. Just as there was in Christ, in His 
holy sinless nature, a learning of obedience through 
what He suffered, until it culminated in the sur- 
render of His will unto the death, so there may be 
in the believer, who seeks to follow his Lord in full 
conformity, such a growth, both in insight into the 
absolute necessity of a giving up of all self-will, even 
in the least things, and also in the Divine certainty 
of God's working in us, what Christ has won for us, 
that he is led to know experimentally what it is that 
he is crucified with Christ, and dead to self and its 
will. But there can be no thought of our under- 
standing or attaining this, unjdl the desire, ha,s come 
to give up all, even unto death^to live in the will of 
God alone. 

Believer! is this the very Christ you delight in 
and seek to be conformed to, and long to know more 
fully in His indwelling power? In Gethsemane He 
entered into the very deepest and nearest fellowship 
with you in surrendering His will to the death : enter 
you there into the deepest and nearest fellowship 
with Him in surrendering your will as He did. 



6o Thy Will Be Done 

; Pray for the Holy Spirit to show you how self-will 
is the root of all sin and temptation and darkness; 
how the will of God can come in and cast it out and 
live in you ; how faith in Christ who died to conquer 
our self-will, and now waits to dwell in us, can make 
you partaker of His death and victory. Learn the 
lesson that death to self-will just means a quiet bow- 
ing before God in utter poverty and helplessness, and^ 
a simple trusting in the Blessed Lamb of God, who 
passed through death as the only way to the perfect 
surrender of His will to God's will, to breathe 
His own Spirit, and with it the very will of God, 
into us. 

To a soul longing to live only and wholly in the 
will of God, death to all self-will is the one inevit- 
able demand, but also, in the faith of Christ Jesus, 
the one sure and most blessed deliverance. 



IX 

LORD! WHAT WILT THOU? 

" And Saul, trembling and astonished, said, Lord ! what 
wilt Thou have me to dof — Acts ix. 6. 

ON the prayer, Thy will be done in heaven so 
on earth, there needs to follow the more 
special one, Lord ! what wilt Thou have me to do ? 
Men have often asked what was the secret of the 
wonderful consecration and power which we see in 
the life of Paul. At his conversion, his first act, 
after he knew the Lord who had met him, was the 
surrender of his will. Lord ! what wilt Thou have 
me to do ? ^ That word was the beginning, the root, 
the strength, the mark of his whole wonderful life. 
His work was so blessed and fruitful, because he 
remained faithful to the one thing: he only lived 
for the will of his Lord. 

There are many lessons which these words sug- 
gest. . . . The Lord has a will, a life-plan for each 



^The R. V. omits these words. We have their substance 
in PauFs account of his conversion (Acts xxii. lo), "And 
I said, What shall I do, Lord ! '' 

6i 



''KX " ■ ^^^^^ 






62 Thy Will Be Done 

of us, according to which He wishes us to live. . . . 
To each of us the Lord will unfold this will or life- 
plan. . . . He expects us to wait on Him for the 
discovery of His will both in that which is universal, 
for all His people, as in that which He wills for each 
one individually. . . . When this prayer is honest 
and true, it implies the whole-hearted willingness to 
yield ourselves and our life to the doing of that will. 
'j . . . We may count upon an answer to such prayer, 
because God does not ask of His child more than 
He makes known as His will. 

These and other such-like lessons give abundant 
occasion for meditation and prayer. In this chapter 
I desire to ask your attention to another lesson, ap- 
parently very simple, and yet of deep significance, 
including all the others. It is what was suggested 
in the opening paragraph: True conversion is noth- 
ing but a surrender to live only to do the will of 
God. 

Do not say: But is not this a matter of course, 
that everyone admits? Far from it. Most Chris- 
tians never have understood it. It may be that you 
have never yet fully grasped it. True conversion is 
the turning from my own will, so as never to seek or 
do it ; the surrender of my will, with all its strength 
and at all times only to seek and do what God wills. 



Lord ! What Wilt Thou ? 63 

But am I then to have no will of my own? You 
are indeed to have a will, the stronger the better, and 
to use it with all your strength for the one great 
work for which God created and fitted it. That one 
thing was: to accept and to will what God wills. 
This is the image and likeness of God for which 
man was created, the glory and the blessedness of the 
life of a child of God, that He can say: the holy, 
heavenly, perfect will of God is my will. I have 
seen it and accepted it and m.ade it my own. To will 
and to do with all my strength what Gk)d wills and 
does, this is the noblest work the will of a creature 
can be engaged in. In this is the very image and 
likeness of God : to will ever as He wills. We then 
learn to say: How wonderful, what an honour; I 
will always just what God wills. Or as an old saint 
expressed it: I am always happy, because I always 
have my own way; God's will and mine are always 
one. 

This surrender to the will of God, the key of 
Paul's conversion and of his life, is the secret of 
all true conversion and true Christian living. And 
it is because so many have entered the Christian 
course without any apprehension of God's demand 
that they should now cease from all self-will, and 
only do His will, that they make so little progress, 



64 Thy Will Be Done 

that it is with them as it is written : '* They went 
backwards and not forwards." They have never 
understood what Scripture says of God's children: 
they are '' born not of the will of man, but of God " ; 
'' it is not of him that willeth^ but of God which 
showeth mercy " ; " of His own will begat He us, by 
the word of truth/' The whole will of man, as his 
own power, however good and religious it may be, 
is shut out of the kingdom of heaven; it has to be 
denied and crucified; how much more the sinful 
self-will. As God's will alone brought forth the 
Divine life in us, its whole growth and strength 
are to be found in this alone. '* My meat is to do 
the will of Him that sent Me." The great hin- 
drance in the life of God in the soul is this one 
thing : we have not given up our will. When once 
a child of God begins to see that here lies the defect 
of his Christian life, there is no deliverance until he 
go back upon his conversion and admit and confess 
the one cause of failure. He did not know how ut- 
terly evil his will was, and how entire the renunci- 
ation of it to which he was called. When the Lord 
Jesus said : '' If any man will be My disciple let him 
deny himself, and take up his cross," it meant first 
of all, let him deny his own will, and crucify it. 
The will of God is our salvation, not only as it is 



Lord ! What Wilt Thou ? 65 

willed by Him, but as it is received into our inmost 
being, submitted to and wrought out in our life, truly 
willed by us. Because our salvation rests each mo- 
ment in the saving will of God, we can have only as 
much of the salvation as we accept the will. Until this 
is grasped, the true reason of our failure is not un- 
derstood. As the error and the sin are heartily ac- 
knowledged, the soul is prepared to make a new be- 
ginning, and in the redeeming power of the Glorified 
Lord Jesus to say to God, Lo, I come, as it is written 
in the volume of the book, not only for Christ, but 
for each of His disciples : I delight to do Thy will, 
O my God. 

If I am to turn to God in a new and full surrender 
to His will, it must be in a new and full trust in what 
Christ can do for me. Saul's question. Lord, what 
wilt Thou have me to do ? was preceded by another, 
out of which it was born: Who art Thou, Lord? 
It was the vision of the Son of God in His glory, it 
was the personal revelation ^^ I am Jesus, whom 
thou persecutest," that wrought the mighty change, 
and made him yield him.self so readily and so entirely 
to the will of his new-found Lord. We need some- 
thing of the same kind. Nothing less than a new 
revelation of the Divine authority, and the tender 
love of Him whom we have grieved so long, but who 



66 Thy Will Be Done 

now comes to claim and to make us the faithful 
servants of His will, can really enable us to say in 
confidence: Lord! what wilt Thou have me to do? 
Speak Lord, Thy servant will do it. 

Who is ready to enter upon this path of entire 
devotion to the will of God, the only true Christ- 
life? The steps are simple. 

Remember, the will of God is the revelation of 
His hidden Divine love and blessedness, and that 
the only way to know and enjoy God and His love 
is to do His will. Say therefore boldly: I may, I 
will do nothing but God's will. 

Believe that in answer to the prayer, Lord ! what 
wilt Thou? Jesus Christ will make known God's 
will day by day; and that where He teaches me to 
know it by His spirit, He gives me strength to do it. 

And when I have said, Lord! here am I, ready 
to do all Thy will, let me wait upon Him to reveal 
Himself as my Redeeming Lord, who with the com- 
mand gives the power: His voice, His presence, 
His love compel a willing obedience. It is the an- 
swer to the first prayer, Who art Thou, Lord? that 
prepares for the answer to the second, Lord! what 
wilt Thou have me to do? Paul had heard 
Stephen speak of " the Son of Man standing at the 
right hand of God." It was when, in " a light from 



Lord ! What Wilt Thou ? 67 

heaven above the brightness of the sun/' he had for 
himself this vision of the Glorified One, that his eyes 
and heart were for ever darkened to earth, and his 
life was given up to do the will of his Lord alone. It 
is so even still. The faith of Christ Triumphant 
looking upon us and conquering us for Himself, 
compels and empowers us to do His will alone. 

Lord ! show Thyself to me ; then I can do what- 
ever Thou biddest me. In living communion with 
Thee, I can do all things. 



X 

THE MAN AFTER GOD'S OWN HEART 

" I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after Mine 
own heart, who shall do all My will/' — Acts xiii. 22; i 
Sam. xiii. 14. 

OF the two expressions God uses here of David, 
v^e often hear the former : " a man after 
Mine own heart." The use of the latter : " who shall 
do all My will," is much less frequent. And yet it 
is no less important than the other. A man after 
Mine own heart: that speaks of the deep unseen mys- 
tery of the pleasure a man can give to God in heaven. 
Who shall do all My will: that deals with the life 
down here on earth which can be seen and judged 
by men. Let us seek and get full hold of the truth 
that it is the man ii^lio does all God's will who is the 
man after His own heart. Such men God seeks: 
when He finds them He rejoices over them with great 
joy: they are the very men He needs, men He can 
trust and use. His heart, with its hidden Divine 
perfections, reveals itself in His will; he that seeks 
I and loves and does all His will is a man altogether 

68 



The Man After God's Own Heart 69 

after His own Tieart : the man of absolute surrender . 
to God's will. 

Such was David in striking contrast with Saul, 
the type of the half-hearted and sdf-pleasing Chris- 
tian. We know what remarkable experiences Saul 
had at the outset of his life. The Spirit of God came 
upon him, and another heart was given him, and he 
prophesied. There was not lacking in him a sense 
of humility ; when he was to be presented to the peo- 
ple, he hid himself. And speedily God began to 
work through him salvation in Israel. But it was 
not long before self-will began to show itself. 
When God sent him with the command to destroy 
Amalek utterly, he did God's work deceitfully, and 
under pretence of bringing sacrifices to offer to God, 
did his own will in the matter of Agag and the best 
of the spoil. His terrible failure was used of God, 
by the contrast, to bring out more strikingly the 
great truth, that the man whom God can use to rule 
His people and establish His kingdom, that the man 
after His own heart, who pleases Him, is he of whom 
He can say : he shall do all My will. 

After what we have already learnt of God's will, 
with the place it has in the Christian life, and in 
preparation for a spiritual apprehension of the fur- 
ther teaching of God's Word, it may be well to use 



70 Thy Will Be Done 

these words for the simplest possible instruction to 
all who are asking the question: How can I be- 
come such a one? What must I do that God can 
say of me : a man after Mine own heart, who shall 
do all My will ? 

First of all, remember, you cannot attain to this by 
anything you can do. No resolution, no effort, no 
help you seek in prayer to strengthen your weakness, 
will effect what you desire. And why not? Be- 
cause you have in you a nature wholly ruled by self- 
will, and wholly opposed to God's will. Nothing can 
delight in God's will and actually do it, but a new 
and Divine nature, born and daily renewed in you 
by a Divine power from above. "" The carnal mind 
is enmity against God,'' and averse from His will. 
As entire as has been the perversion of the old nature 
from God and His will, must be the deliverance of 
the new nature from self and its will. Here is our 
first lesson. No desire, however honest, no purpose, 
however fixed, no surrender, however absolute, can 
make a man after God's own heart, who shall do all 
His will. Such a man must be born from above, 
and must do all he does in the power of that new 
Divine life. A regenerate man may indeed in some 
things do God's will, as the fruit of the first half- 
unconscious workings of the Holy Spirit within him. 



The Man After God's Own Heart 71 

But this is only preparatory to what God really aims 
at — that His child of his own free will, shall intelli- 
gently and heartily choose to do all His will. That 
little word all is the secret of true consecration, of a 
life '' worthy of the Lord unto all well-pleasing/' of 
being a man after God's own heart. 

We all know what a great difference there is be- 
tween a feeble child, or a sickly man, and one in full 
health. And so it is not enough that you just have 
a beginning or small measure of spiritual life ; 
that will not enable you to do all God's will. The 
question is ix'hetJier yon are living only, and doing 
all, under the pozver of the Holy Spirit, as the 
strength of the nezu life. It is only the Spirit of God 
Himself that can do the will of God. And the great 
reason why God's children do not claim, do not yield 
themselves by the Spirit of God to work all His will 
in them, is that they do not know how foolish, how 
helpless it is, to expect even the regenerate man to 
do God's will, Vv'ithout the direct and unceasing 
operation of God's Spirit. And then again, because 
they do not know the subtle and altogether un- 
conquerable power of our corrupt nature, except as 
God Himself through His Son and Spirit lives and 
works in the inmost recesses of our being, and in- 
spires all its powers. If you learn the first lesson 



72 Thy Will Be Done 

well — the secret aversion of your nature to God's 
will, and your complete inability to overcome or to 
change it, you are prepared to go on to the second. 

It is this. Believe that you have a new and Di- 
vine nature, expressly fitted and prepared to do all 
God's will, on the one condition^ that you hold it in 
close and continual dependence upon the Holy Spirit, 
through whom God in Christ works in you. Jesus 
Christ could do nothing of Himself, though He was 
the Son, without the Father working in Him. Does 
it displease you to be as absolutely dependent up- 
on God as He was ? As part of your faith in Jesus 
Christ, believe that God works in you as in Him. 
Believe this, however dark and feeble you feel, just 
as you believe, in the darkness of midnight, that the 
sun is shining on the other half of the world, and 
will in the morning rise upon you. It is this faith, 
with the humble, patient, dependent surrender to 
God which it works, that will bring you to an entirely 
nev/ position and power in the doing God's will. 

In this faith, here is our third lesson, humbly 
but confidently give yourself up to God to do all His 
will. Give yourself to Him, as a loving Father, so 
that you do not take His commands as a mere law, 
but as a loving will — the will of the Father, made 
known in the loving fellowship by Himself to your- 



The Man After God's Own Heart 73 

self. Look at God's will as one great whole — the 
revelation of His loving purpose with man and with 
you. Set yourself resolutely, now, in the faith of 
the Holy Spirit's working in you, to count it your one 
business every day to do all God's will. Then again, 
bow yourself in the deepest humility and impotence 
to wait on God to work in you. The humility that 
bows in deep grief at the enmity of the evil nature 
against God's will, in confession of the impotence 
of the regenerate nature of itself to do that will, in 
the dependence of a childlike waiting on God for 
Him to work His will in you, will be a new entrance 
into the kingdom of heaven. The Christian life 
will become something quite new to you under the 
power of these great truths : your utter and ever- 
abiding impotence to do God's will, even as a re- 
generate man, without the unceasing work of the 
Holy Spirit: your Divine and complete sufficiency 
in Christ for all that the Father asks of you when 
He calls you to be a man after His own heart, who 
shall do all His will. 



XI 

THE WILL OF THE LORD BE DONE 

" And when Paul would not be persuaded, we ceased, 
saying: The will of the Lord he done/' — Acts xxi. 14. 

PAUL was at Csesarea, on his way to Jerusalem. 
Agabus, a prophet, had said by the Holy 
Spirit that Paul would there be bound, and delivered 
into the hands of the Gentiles. Paul's friends be- 
sought him not to go. In his answer he spoke the 
noble words : I am ready not to be bound only, but 
also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord 
Jesus. When they heard this, they said : The will 
of the Lord be done. It w^as no longer a question of 
Jews or Gentiles, not even of the life or death of 
Paul ; if it was to be, they would accept it as the will 
of God. The story teaches us the wisdom, the duty, 
the blessing of accepting disappointment or trial that 
cannot be averted, as God's will, and so turning 
what naturally would cause sorrow or anger, into 
an occasion of holy resignation and humble worship 
of God in His sovereign wisdom and power. 

74 



The Will of the Lord Be Done 75 

There is a twofold will of God: the will of ap- 
proval and the will of peiTnission. In the former we 
see what He desires or ordains as right and good. 
The latter includes all that happens in the world 
either as the result of natural law and second causes, 
or as the work of ungodly men and evil spirits. To 
admit that what God's will directly appoints is good 
is comparatively easy. But to recognise His will 
in all the evil that comes to us or around us from 
evil men, is a truth many a believer never accepts. 
It is one of the most blessed lessons anyone 
can learn to see that no possible trouble can ever 
come to us, that is not for us in very deed the 
will of our Father. Though Judas, and Caiaphas, 
and Pilate sinned against God's holy and 
righteous wull in the death of Jesus, the suffer- 
ing and death they caused Him He accepted as 
the will of God, the cup the Father gave Him. 
The sin of those who persecute or hurt a child 
of God, is not His will, and yet the suffering caused, 
with all its consequences, is to him God's will. 
As this is seen the believer turns his eyes from the 
human cause to the heavenly Father's will, and finds 
that suffering becomes a blessing, and that no power 
on earth or in hell can rob the soul of the perfect 
rest there is in that blessed will. The place of trial 



76 Thy Will Be Done 

becomes the place of blessing. Let us see what is 
needed to secure this. 

1. In time of trial let me say at once : Here I am 
by the will of God, in the very place God has chosen 
for me. Whether the trial comes from the hatred of 
an enemy, or the Vv^rong of a friend, through my own 
fault or in the course of God's more direct Provi- 
dence, I m^ay be sure, and ought therefore heartily to 
consent to it, that the difficulty or distress in which I 
am is the will of God concerning me. Whether it be 
some great trial or some petty annoyance, whether a 
temporary grief or some long-continued cause of 
weariness or irritation, be sure that the secret of 
peace and rest is to say : This trouble is what God 
wills for me. It is this lifts me from man to God 
and His will. To that will I have yielded myself. 
In that will I rest. The will of the Lord be done. 

2. This prepares the soul to say with confidence: 
God, who has brought me into this trouble, zvill as- 
suredly give me the grace to bear it aright. The 
grace that is needed to bear suffering as God would 
have His child do it, so as to glorify Him in it, must 
come from Him. The quiet submission, the child- 
like trust, the living entrance into and union with 
His will. He will work in the soul that adoringly 
says: The will of the Lord be done. All the 



The Will of the Lord Be Done 77 

promises of the Holy Scripture, with all the com- 
fort they afford in the assurance of God's presence 
and aid in trouble, depend for their fulfilment on this 
one condition, that the soul gives itself up to the will 
of God. Then can w^e prove that God's will is Love 
and Blessing. The more willingly I say, God 
brought me here, the more confidently I can say, 
He has charge and cares for me. 

3. We shall then be led farther on to the assur- 
ance: God Himself zvill teach me the lessons for 
which He sent the trial This is something more 
than the trust, and peace^ and surrender we have 
just been speaking of. They keep us from grieving 
God or vexing ourselves in the school of affliction. 
But beyond these graces God has special lessons for 
every child whom He leads aside in His loving 
chastisement. He wants to cure us permanently 
of our self-will and of our worldliness, to waken us 
into the true imitation of the humility and the 
self-sacrifice of His Son, to draw us into full fel- 
lowship with Him who made us for His Divine in- 
dwelling and operation within us, to fit us to live 
lives of blessing to others. These lessons are often 
sadly missed by those who suffer much ; and those 
who try to learn them often feel how greatly they 
have failed. It is because we do not believe: the 



78 Thy Will Be Done 

Father, who brought me into this place of trial, will 
Himself teach the lessons He would have me learn 
and work all the grace He fain would see in me. 
The will of the Lord be done, includes not only the 
trial itself, but all that God meant by it, and has 
undertaken Himself to work out in the willing, wait- 
ing soul. 

4. When thus we have entered into living union 
with the Father through His will, we shall not fear 
to say: God's will, which brought me here, can, in 
His way and time, bring me out again. With many 
children of God the desire for deliverance from 
trouble is the first, if not even the only, thought. 
This should not be so. Suffering is not natural to 
us ; we are at liberty to call upon God for deliverance 
in the day of trouble. But it is not for this alone 
the heart must turn to God. The first desire must 
be that God may be glorified in loving submission, 
and childlike teachableness; that His will in all it 
means and aims at with the trial may be done. It 
is when, in this its true and full meaning, the prayer : 
The will of the Lord be done, rises from the heart, 
that the burden may be taken away without our being 
the losers, and that the deliverance may bring as 
much glory to God in our holy devotion as the suf- 
fering could have done. The union with God's will 



The Will of the Lord Be Done 79 

will teach us how to look to it in the right spirit for 
help. 

What a privilege that the darkest trials, the bitter- 
est sorrows, as well as the smaller disappointments 
or the passing fears of life, can all help to unite me 
more perfectly with the will of my God. By His 
grace 1 will seek to live every day, amid tears of sor- 
row and songs of joy, in quiet submission or in 
triumphant faith, as they do in heaven, with the one 
word in the heart : The will of the Lord be done. It 
is this gives heaven on earth. 

I worship Thee, sweet Will of God, 

And all Thy ways adore, 
And every day I live I seem 

To love Thee more and more. 

I have no cares, O blessed Will! 

For all my cares are Thine; 
I live in triumph, Lord, for Thou 

Hast made Thy triumphs mine. 

Man's weakness waiting upon God, 

Its ends can never miss; 
For man on earth no work can do, 

More angel like than this. 

He always wins who sides with God, 

To him no chance is lost; 
God's will is sweetest to him when 

It triumphs at his cost. 



8o Thy Will Be Done 

111 that He blesses is our good, 

And unblest good is ill. 
And all is right that seems most wrong 

If it be His sweet will. 



XII 

OF KNOWING GOD'S WILL 

*' And Ananias said, The God of our fathers hath ap- 
pointed thee to know His will, and to see the Righteous 
One, for thou shalt be His witness to all men, of what thou 
hast seen and heard, and to hear a voice from His mouth." 
— Acts xxii. 14, 15. 

WHEN Saul said, Lord! what wilt Thou have 
me to do? the reference was to personal 
immediate duty. When Ananias, after three days, 
spoke of his call from God '' to know His will," the 
thought was a much larger one. Saul had been 
prepared of God as His chosen vessel, to whom he 
could intrust '' the mystery of His will," " the mys- 
tery of Christ," '' which from the beginning of the 
world had been hid in God," " that the Gentiles are 
fellow-heirs and fellow-members of the body and 
fellow-partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus, 
through the Gospel" (Eph. i. 9, 10, iii. 3-9). 

I have previously spoken of the need of not con- 
fining our knowledge of God's will to the commands 
and promises which have special reference to our- 

81 



82 Thy Will Be Done 

selves. All God's children are called to enlarge 
/ their hearts, to take a personal interest in the great 
work God is seeking to carry out in the world, and so 
to be ready to take their part in the fulfilment of His 
purpose — the winning back of the world to Him, 
to be the kingdom of His Son. 

In studying PauFs surrender to Christ's will in 
conversion, we saw how closely that was linked to 
his vision of the Lord in heaven. Here we find the 
same connection: * ^Appointed to know His will, 
and to see the Righteous One." The mystery of 
God's will is the mystery of Christ : to know the will 
is inseparable from knowing the Righteous One, who 
put away sin, and is to rule in righteousness on the 
earth. In the life and writings of Paul we see how 
firmly he holds the two truths together. It is ever 
" Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we re- 
ceived grace and apostleship, unto obedience of the 
faith among all nations, for His name's sake." As 
one who had seen and heard him, Paul's Gospel was 
ever a personal witness. He never preached the will 
of God as a doctrine, or a decree, or even as a reve- 
ilation, apart from the living person of that Lord 
Jesus in whom that will had revealed all its riches 
and blessings, and in personal contact with whom 
alone its salvation could be realised. To know the 



Of Knowing God's Will 83 

will, and to see the Righteous One, let these ever be 
inseparable. The living Christ Himself can alone fit 
us to know and do the will of God. To know the will 
and not see the Righteous One would make it a new 
law of Moses, a burden heavy to be borne. To see 
Him is to know the will in the light of God's love, 
to know it in its Divine beauty and perfection, and 
to receive the power to do it. 

All that God did in Paul v^as '' for an ensample 
unto them which should hereafter believe.'' Like 
him, and through him, each of us is called, in our 
measure to know this larger will of God, His purpose 
for all men, that the Gospel should be preached to 
every creature. There is no sadder proof of how 
little it is understood or preached that, jttst as Christ, 
so His Church, is only in the world to carry out this 
Divine will, than the lack, in the great majority of 
Christians, of anything like enthusiastic devotion to 
the cause of Missions. Even among those who do 
give them a measure of support, there is so little 
sense of the overwhelming prominence which ought 
to be given to this will of God. It is not one com- ^. 
mand among others. It is the one thing in which the I "" 
will of the Father includes everything : that all men 
should know and honour Christ. It is the one thing 
for which Christ died and lives. It is the one thing 



84 Thy Will Be Done 

for which the Church exists, to be a light of tfiem 
I that are in darkness. It is the one thing by which a 
child of God can prove that he Hves not unto himself 
but unto Him that died for him and rose again. It 
is the one truth that above all else needs to be re- 
stored to its place and which assuredly will bring the 
revival of every other truth of the spiritual life as 
its necessary condition. This is in very deed the 
very will of God, that the Church as the body of 
Christ, and every believer as its member, is to seek 
first, absolutely first, the kingdom of God, and to 
labour that His will be done throughout the earth, 
as in heaven. 

And what can be the reason, if this be the will 
of God, that the Church has so little apprehended 
or fulfilled it? If Paul was divinely illuminated 
to know that will, and to make it known to the 
Church, how comes it that it has so little possessed 
the Church of Christ? The answer is not far to 
seek. Just as in Paul this will of God needed 
a very special spiritual revelation, so still. It is 
easy, when once a truth has been seen and pointed 
out by spiritual men, for other Christians to see and 
accept it too. And yet it may be an article of men- 
tal belief, that does not really, through living faith, 
master and possess the heart. The will of God is 



Of Knowing God's Will 85 

a living spiritual energy; we do not know that will 
truly until it has entered and filled our will. As love 
alone can meet love, and heart alone touch heart, so 
will alone can apprehend will. Anything less is but 
a mental image, a conception of the truth, not the 
thing itself in its reality and power. And so a great 
deal of the missionary interest of our day proves, 
by the feeble hold it has, and the little sacrifice there 
is made for it^ and the need of continual appeal to 
minor motives, that the knowledge of this mystery 
of God's will is not held in the power of the Spirit. 

Paul speaks of '' the riches of the glory of this 
mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, 
the hope of glory.'^ It is only as the mystery of 
Christ in us, the experience of an indwelling Christ 
is truly known, that the glory of the mystery will be 
seen to be this, that it is the will of God for all the 
Gentiles. The more truly I know by the Spirit what 
it is to have Christ in me, the more I shall long and 
labour that it may be Christ in all. 

" God hath appointed thee to know His will, and 
to see the Righteous One, and to hear a voice from 
His mouth, and to be His witness of what thou hast 
seen and heard.'' God gave Paul as an ensample; 
in thy measure this word is for thee too, my reader. 
Do believe that in this mystery of God's will for the 



86 Thy Will Be Done 

Gentiles the glory of God, of Christ, of the Church, 
of every believer is centred. All God's wisdom and 
power, His holiness and love and faithfulness meet 
in it. And thou art appointed — what a privilege — to 
know His will, and have it possess thee, and use 
thee as its instrument and messenger and witness. 
Fear not to yield thyself utterly to it, a living sacri- 
fice. " Appointed to know His will, and '' (here 
is thy strength) ''to see the Righteous One," 
who Himself wrought that will and now works 
mightily in all who see Him, and receive Him as 
their Lord who dwells in them. Oh! cast thyself 
into this mighty stream of Divine love — the will of 
God for the salvation of the ends of the earth. Look 
up and see and worship the Righteous One, the Lord 
our Righteousness, the King of Righteousness, whose 
rule is to bring peace and blessing to the world ; to do 
all God's will for the establishment of the kingdom, 
will become thy one ambition. 



XIII 

KNOWING AND NOT DOING 

*' If thou bearest the name of a Jew, and gloriest in God, 
and knowest His will, and art confident that thou thyself 
art a guide of the blind : thou therefore that teachest 
another, teachest thou not thyself! thou that preachest a 
man should not steal, dost thou steal." — Rom. ii. 17-21. 

IN chapter i of this Epistle we have the terrible 
unrighteousness of the heathen, with its con- 
sequent darkness, portrayed. In chapter ii the self- 
righteousness of the Jews, with the fatal delusion 
that rests in the knowing of God's will without doing 
it. Men gloried in God and made their boast of 
Israel's having had a Divine revelation^ and being 
the depository of God's will, and yet never thought 
of the folly of not doing that will. It is the same 
evil against which Christ warned, when He said: 
'' Not every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, 
shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that 
doeth the will of My Father which is in heaven.^' 
Our subject to-day is the terrible possibility of glory- 
ing in God and delighting in the study and the 

87 



88 Thy Will Be Done 

knowledge of His will, and yet not' doing it. Let us 
try and discover the cause of this sad phenomenon, 
as frequent in the Christian Church as in Israel. 
That will lead us to see what its cure must be. Let 
us bring our own life into the full light of Scripture 
teaching, and find out whether the doing of God's 
will has really that supreme place in our thought 
and conduct which it has in the mind of God and the 
teaching of Christ. 

One would say that from the very nature of the 
thing every Christian would know that doing God's 
will is the very essence of true religion. Whether 
we regard Him as Creator or Lawgiver, as Father 
or Redeemer, we cannot but admit that we cannot 
honour or please, cannot fulfil our relationship to 
Him, without living to do His will. Whether we 
think of the escape from the power of sin, or the walk 
in His fellowship and love, or the participation in the 
happiness of His service, here or hereafter, every- 
things points to the doing of God's will as the only 
possible way of really living in the enjoyment of sal- 
vation. What can be the reason that so many 
Christians have never known that doing God's will 
is the very first duty of the Christian's life, indis- 
pensable to its health and safety? 

With many the cause is an entire misapprehen- 



Knowing and Not Doing 89 

sion of the nature of salvation. They have misunder- 
stood God's glorious Gospel. They heard that God 
justifies the ungodly of free grace without any 
works of righteousness he ever had done or needed 
to do to secure God's favour. They heard right. 
But they understood wrong. They were content to 
believe in the pardon of sin, and deliverance from 
punishment, and never saw that salvation means 
restoration to the love and fellowship of God, to the 
honour and blessedness of a walk in obedience to 
His will. Content with being saved from guilt, they 
never thought that being saved from the doing of 
sin is the real proof of the power of salvation, and 
the real entrance upon a life in the likeness and holi- 
ness of God. The entire reasonableness, the un- 
speakable blessedness, the indispensable necessity, the 
supreme obligation of seeking and loving to do God's 
will as it is done in heaven, has never dawned upon 
them. Entirely to give up their own will in order 
to follow and carry out God's will has never become 
an article of their creed. They are content with 
the traditional, conventional view of Christian duty, 
but never thought that all that is known of God's 
will, must at once be done. 

With others the cause of failure in doing God's 
will is a misapprehension as to the power of salva- 



90 Thy Will Be Done 

tion. They believe that God's law is unchangeable 
in its demands, and that it is their bounden duty 
to obey it perfectly. They have learnt from Scrip- 
ture and experience how utterly impotent they are 
to fulfil its claims. They have never understood 
how in the New Testament, the law of God with 
its inexorable demand and condemnation becomes 
transformed into the will of God, which does not 
mean mere demand but actual living power. They 
know not what it means: Ye are not under the 
law, with its impotence, but under grace, with its 
omnipotence, zvorking in you all that it asks. They 
are held in bondage of the legal spirit, and do not 
believe that it is possible to live a life in the will 
of God. They admire and delight in a promise such 
as : My grace is sufficient for thee. My strength is 
made perfect in weakness ; or a testimony : I can do 
all things in Christ who strengtheneth Me, but dare 
not expect their fulfilment in their own experience. 
They do not think it possible always to be doing 
God's will. 

There are still others who believe both in the ob- 
ligation and the possibility, and yet complain of con- 
tinual failure. The reason is with them very much 
misapprehension as to the knowledge of God's will. 
They study God's Word very earnestly to find out 



Knowing and Not Doing 91 

God's will, and yet fail of finding with that knowl- 
edge the strength to perform. They know not that 
it is only where the light of the Holy Spirit shows 
God's willy that His strength will work it in us. 
The will of God, discovered and accepted by our 
human wisdom, must be obeyed by our human 
strength. The humble, childlike spirit that believes 
that the Father will by His Spirit show us what 
He wants us to do, will receive grace also to believe 
that for what the Father wants and shows, He will 
give the needed strength. As we see that it is not 
enough for us to have the Word and out of that take 
what we think we ought to do, but wait on God for 
guidance^ to know what He would have us to do, we 
shall learn that to be taught God's will by His Spirit, 
is half the secret of being strengthened by Him to 
do it. 

Believer! Jesus Christ thy Saviour came to do 
the will of God, and to enable thee to do it too. 
Dost thou know Him as thy Owner who claims to 
have thy whole being, with every power and every 
moment? Hast thou acknowledged His Owner- 
ship, and yielded thyself wholly to live only as He 
would have thee? Hast thou, in the faith of His 
strength, made this surrender, and believed that by 
His Holy Spirit He seals and maintains it ? Oh then, 



92 Thy Will Be Done 

be not afraid to believe that He will show thee all 
God's will for thee, and fit thee for doing it ! Believe 
that, morning by morning, He will open thine ear 
to hear His voice, and that, to the meek and lowly 
of heart. He will give God's light and God's strength 
for all God's will. 



XIV 

THE RENEWED MIND PROVING GOD'S WILL 

" Be not fashioned according to this world : but be ye 
transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may 
prove what is the good, and acceptable, and perfect will of 
God:' — Rom. xii. 2. 

WITH the first verse of Rom. xii. the practical 
part of the Epistle begins by Paul's implor- 
ing believers to present their bodies a living sacrifice, 
holy, acceptable to God. In verse 2 there follows 
the call to these God-devoted men, if their sacrifice 
is indeed to be acceptable to God, to prove, that is, 
to find out and show, what is the acceptable will of 
God. He who would live as an acceptable sacrifice 
must live in the acceptable will of God. The one ac- 
ceptable sacrifice is the doing of the acceptable will. 
To live in the will of God is the one only thing that 
can make us well-pleasing to Him. The one only 
object and proof of true consecration is — doing the 
will of God. 

The three adjectives Paul uses, the good, and ac- 
ceptable, and perfect will of God, indicate three stages 

93 



94 Thy Will Be Done 

in our proving and knowing the will of God. The 
first refers to our discerning between good and evil, 
and our accepting what we know of God's will as 
indeed good. The second points to our knowledge 
of God's will in special relation to ourselves. The 
will of God is not the same for all His children; 
as we find out what is specially the will of God for 
ourselves, we know that what we do is actually ac- 
ceptable, well-pleasing to Him. The third word, 
perfect, tells us that we may not rest content with 
what we already know and do of God's will ; this is 
only a beginning ; we must press on to stand perfect 
in all the will of God. To know and accept the will 
of God as good, is the first step, is good. To know 
it in our personal relationship to Him as 
well-pleasing, is better. To know the perfect 
will of God is best of all, the true aim of 
the full Christian life. So we can prove and know 
for ourselves, so we can prove to men, what is the 
good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God. So 
we yield our bodies an acceptable sacrifice. On the 
first great call of the Epistle : Live wholly as sacri- 
fices to God, follows at once the second as its com- 
plement: Live only to do the will of God. 

Between these two commands there are inserted 
a warning and an exhortation. '' Be not fashioned 



The Renewed Mind Proving God's Will 95 

according to the world/' is the warning that reveals 
our first and greatest danger. ''Be ye transformed 
by the renewing of your mind " , is the exhortation 
that reveals the path and the strength in which it 
becomes possible to overcome the danger and stand 
perfect in all the will of God. 

Would you indeed know and do God's will, listen 
to the warning : '' Be not conformed to this 
world.'' '' The friendship of this world is enmity 
against God." Its root principle, that by which it be- 
came a '' world that lieth in the evil one," was the 
rejection of the will of God. The world may ac- | 
knowledge a God, but it cannot and will not do His 
will. It cannot by its very nature do anything but 
its own will. We are by nature of the world. We 
are still in it, and ever in danger of being under its 
influence. After our regeneration the secret, subtle 
atmosphere with which it surrounds us, and with 
which the flesh is in alliance, hinders thousands of 
Christians from seeking a life of true and full devo- 
tion to the will of God. Unless with our whole heart 
we reject its principles, its pleasures, its pursuits, we 
gradually lose the spiritual capacity of delighting in 
and performing God's will. Unless we come out 
from the world, where self-will and self-pleasing 
rules, we never can live the life in which the believer 



^6 Thy Will Be Done 

only seeks to be a sacrifice well-pleasing to God, 
and to prove the well-pleasing will of God. Do let 
us believe it — the great cause of failure in doing the 
will of God is simply a worldly spirit. Therefore 
beware : '' Be not fashioned according to this world." 

The negative, not being fashioned according to 
the world, must be accompanied by the positive: 
" But be ye transformed by the renewing of your 
mind." The renewal in regeneration, once for all, 
must be followed up by the continual, the daily, re- 
newing of the Holy Ghost. '' That ye be renewed 
in the spirit of your minds." '' He saved us, through 
the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the 
Holy Ghost." This is the only power that can ena- 
ble us to live as living, holy, acceptable sacrifices, that 
can fit us truly to delight in doing the will of God. 
The attempt to do the will of God with a heart that 
does not daily seek and find the renewing of the 
Holy Spirit in the spirit of the mind, must end in 
failure. It is only a healthy man can do a healthy 
man's work. It is only a spiritual man who can 
walk in the spiritual path of obedience to all God's 
will. 

I ask you, beloved believer, to pause and take in 
the lessons we have been taught. To prove what is 
the good and acceptable will of God is the calling 



The Renewed Mind Proving God's Will 97 

and the privilege of every believer. It is impossible 
to fulfil this calling, except as we know that we have 
definitely yielded ourselves to live as holy sacrifices, 
well-pleasing to God in everything. The one great 
hindrance to this is a worldly spirit in conformity 
to the dispositions and habits of the men of the 
world. The only power that can overcome this 
danger is that of the Holy Spirit : to he daily trans- 
formed in the renewing of our mind gives the spirit- 
ual capacity to know, to love, to do all God's will. 

If you find that you are not yet living this life, 
rest not till you know and possess it. If it is because 
you have never definitely and finally accepted God's 
will as your life, oh, do so now ! If it be that you 
have never presented yourself a living sacrifice — 
come at once, and yield to God's claim ! By the mer- 
cies of God I beseech you : Give up yourself to the 
God who redeemed you. If you have done so but 
failed, because you never knew how much there was 
of the world in you — begin at once to live the life of 
not being fashioned according to the world, but being 
transformed by the renewing of the Holy Ghost. 

Take courage, my brother! The Eternal Spirit 
through whom Christ said, '' I delight to do Thy 
will," and oflFered Himself a sacrifice unto God, 
dwells in you. Yield yourself as a sacrifice for Him 



98 Thy Will Be Done 

to consume. Believe and receive His daily renew- 
ing ; He will fit you for proving all the perfect will of 
God. 



XV 

ACCORDING TO THE WILL OF GOD 

" Our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our sins, 
that He might deliver us out of this present evil world, 
according to the will of our God and Father." — Gal. i. 4. 

PAUL ever carried with him a very deep sense 
of the will of God as the source and the rule 
of all things. In five of the Epistles he speaks of 
himself as an apostle, '' through the will of God." 
The thought of God's will dominated his whole 
ministry, inspiring at once devotion and obedience, 
dependence and perfect confidence. He loved to 
think of God's will working out its purpose through 
him. Of his intention to visit Rome he speaks more 
than once as coming to them '' by the will of God." 
Of the Macedonians giving themselves first to the 
Lord and then to him, he says too that it was '^ by 
the will of God." And so here, in speaking of the 
work of God's Son in our redemption, he shows 
how its chief characteristic is that it was '' according 
to the will of God." Whether in his own life^ or in 
the grace manifested in his converts, or in the work 



loo Thy Will Be Done 

of our Lord Jesus, salvation is to him the will of 
God manifesting itself and working out His purpose. 

The expression he uses in regard to Christ's work 
is a somewhat unusual and remarkable one. " He 
gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver 
us out of this present evil world, according to the 
will of our God and Father." It gives us a new as- 
pect of the Father's will as revealed in Christ's 
death. In our last meditation (Rom. xii. 2) we saw 
how, in the spiritual life, being conformed to the 
world was the first great danger of the consecrated 
soul, and being transformed out of it into newness of 
life the only way to a life in the good and perfect 
will of God. Here we discover the deepest root of 
that teaching. The whole will of God in Christ's 
death had this one object — to deliver us from this 
present evil world. The spirit of the world and the 
will of God are diametrically opposite; the will of 
God demands, and promises, and works entire de- 
liverance from it. If we would know the will of 
God aright, and live in it and according to it, we must 
come out and be entirely separate from all that is of 
this present evil world. That alone is true and full 
salvation. 

" This present evil world.'' And was not this 
world created by God ? And is it all so entirely evil 



According to the Will of God loi 

as to deserve the name '' this evil world/' and to 
need the Son of God to deliver us from it? Yes. 
Scripture teaches that with the entrance of sin into 
the world it came into the pozver of the prince of evil. 
When, in Adam's fall, Satan obtained power over 
him, the world, over which he was to have been king, 
fell with him, and Satan became the god of this 
world, and all men born into it. The world is now 
an organised kingdom of evil, ruled by the god, ani- 
mated by the spirit, of the world. '' The whole world 
lieth in the evil one/' The development of evil, now 
in its slow growth, then again in its sudden outbreaks, 
is no blind evolution, but the result of a deliberate 
systematic war of an intelligent power of evil against 
the rule of God. Whether in the grossest forms 
of heathenism, or amid the refinement of art and 
culture, or even under the guise of a nominal Chris- 
tianity — everywhere the world lieth in darkness, and 
is in its principles and aims the very opposite of the 
kingdom of God and of heaven. The pursuit of the 
visible, the assertion of man's will against that of 
God, the pride of man's wisdom, are its distinguish- 
ing characteristics, in contrast with the will, and the 
love, and the service of the invisible God. 

Jesus Christ came to deliver us out of this present 
evil world, by freeing us from its spirit, and making 



I02 Thy Will Be Done 

us partakers of the life and the powers of the heav- 
enly world. In His intercourse with the rulers of 
this world, both among the Jews and before Pilate, 
He more than once gave expression to the truth: 
** Ye are of this world, I am from above ; I am not 
of this world : My kingdom is not of this world/' 
This other-worldliness He claimed for his disciples 
too : " Ye are not of the world, even as I am not of 
the world. Because ye are not of the world, there- 
fore the world hateth you.'' He described His work 
as an overcoming of the world, and a casting out of 
the prince of the world. He encouraged His disci- 
ples to expect and, in the power of His victory, to 
endure the enmity of the world. The life He 
brought with Him from heaven, and came to im- 
part to us, was one as different from that of the 
world, yea, more so, than heaven is higher than earth. 
The great object of His work was to deliver us from 
this present evil world, according to the will of God. 
This is an aspect of truth that enters all too little 
into the preaching or the practice of our days. We 
sometimes hear of a worldly Christianity, and of a 
religious world, but there appears to be but little 
conception of the extent to which a worldly spirit 
pervades and enfeebles the Christian life. We are 
all of us so born and bred under the power of the 



According to the Will of God 103 

spirit of the world, it is so difficult exactly to 
define or recognise its power and influence, we are 
so little warned of the need of our entire deliver- 
ance from that spirit by the Spirit of God dispelling 
it and taking its place, that one often sees an earnest 
and active religious life with but little of the truly 
unworldly and heavenly spirit. As a consequence 
of this, the power of Jesus Christ, and of faith in 
Him, overcoming the world, and proving that we are 
just as little of the world as He was, is little sought 
or known. Our Lord gave Himself that He might 
deliver us from this present evil world, according to 
the will of God : is it any wonder that His full reve- 
lation in the heart is so little enjoyed? Only He 
who seeks to have Jesus do His perfect work, and is 
ready for complete separation and emancipation from 
the spirit of the world, can expect it. 

Let each one of us who would prove^ who would 
know and do, the perfect will of God, study the 
lesson: God wills complete deliverance from this 
present evil world. To this end Jesus Christ gave 
Himself for us : as we receive Him to live in us, 
that will will be done in us. We are surrounded 
on every side by the powers of w^hich the spirit of 
this world has possession and are unable to resist, 
or even to recognise them, unless they are revealed 



I04 Thy Will Be Done 

to us by the Spirit of God. In the Hterature and 
the newspaper press of the day, in all the interest 
and attraction of politics and commerce, of culture 
and pleasure, we are carried along without knowing 
it. In our own hearts^ the love of self with its 
honour and pleasure, the desire of and dependence 
on the visible, the lack of absolute surrender to God 
and His will, are all so many tokens of the worldly 
spirit. Not until we allow the Spirit of God to con- 
vict us of all this, and to possess us with all that is 
its opposite, can we fully know what the deliverance 
is that Christ gives according to the will of God. 

May God help us to connect inseparably the three 
blessed truths set before us here : the will of God, as 
the source; Jesus giving Himself for us, as the 
means ; deliverance from this present evil world, as 
the mark and fruit of the great salvation. May He 
teach that we are just as little of this world as Jesus 
was, because we are one with Him. And may the 
presence and power of the Son of God from heaven 
in our hearts, with its complete deliverance from a 
worldly spirit, be known as in very deed the will of 
God for us. 



XVI 

GOD WORKING OUT HIS OWN WILL 

" Having been foreordained according to the purpose of 
Him who worketh all things after the counsel of His will.'' 
— Eph, i. II. 

IN the Epistle to the Ephesians we have three 
passages concerning the will of God. The first, 
in chapter i., points us back to the eternal mystery 
of that will in God, and tells us how, as God purposed 
it in Himself, so He Himself works it all out. The 
second, in chapter v., calls us to seek to understand 
what the will of God is. The third, in chapter vi., 
brings us down into practical life, and teaches us how 
the most common drudgery of daily duty may all be 
done as the will of God. As in the heights of heaven 
and of eternity, so down into the conduct and the 
heart of the humblest Christian, the will of God 
claims supreme authority. Let us begin and study it 
in its origin and work before the foundation of the 
world. 

Paul writes — ^Eph. i. 5 — of God having " predes- 
105 



io6 Thy Will Be Done 

tinated us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ 
unto Himself, according to the good pleasure of His 
zvill, according to the riches of His grace, which He 
made to abound toward us, having made known to us 
the mystery of His will, according to His good pleas- 
tire, which He purposed in Him, ... in whom also 
we were made an heritage, having been foreordained 
according to the purpose of Him who worketh all 
things after the counsel of His will/' Each expres- 
sion has its significance. The good pleasure of His 
will — that means the absolute liberty of God, the 
perfection of whose will knows no higher reason than 
that it so pleased Him. In Him the predestination, 
and election, and foreordaining of God's children had 
its origin. The mystery of His will — that suggests 
that it was hidden in God, that we can only know as 
much of it as He reveals, and that even what He 
reveals still has its mystery beyond our comprehen- 
sion. The purpose of His will — that refers to the 
great plan or scheme to be carried out which His holy 
will formed for itself. And the counsel of His will 
reminds us of the Divine '' wisdom and prudence " 
(verse 8) holding counsel with itself, and ordering 
all so as to prove that His good pleasure is indeed 
all that is most right and good and perfect. In the 
secret depths of God's will and its predestinating 



God Working Out His Own Will 107 

purpose lies hidden the salvation of His Church, and 
of every member of it. 

" Having been foreordained according to the pur- 
pose of Him who worketh all things after the counsel 
of His will." What God has willed, He also Himself 
works out. The counsel of His will is too high 
and holy ; none but He can work it out. The will is 
a working power, a determination to act ; even a man 
who really wills a thing seeks to overcome every ob- 
stacle to that will being realised. We need, as we 
study and worship the will of God, to give full scope 
to the conviction that God Himself works out all 
things after the counsel of His will. The eternal 
purpose is what guides all His work: all that the 
eternal purpose fixed must and will be wrought by 
Himself. This faith will teach us some most 
precious lessons. 

It inspires the assurance that God's purpose will 
he performed. We are so apt to look to ourselves 
and our feebleness, to men and to circumstances, and 
by these to measure what appears possible. We need 
to remember that God's sovereign will is a Power that 
will, as much in the great whole as in the minutest 
detail, infallibly secure the fulfilment of His plans. 
Whether in our own heart and life, or in the service 
of His Kingdom in which we take part, we need 



io8 Thy Will Be Done 

definitely to know Him as the '' God who worketh 
all in all." We speak of man's relationship to God 
as that of co-operation. But Divine operation ever 
precedes human co-operation — the former as unceas- 
ing and continuous as the latter, drawing it forth and 
inspiring it. All feebleness in the Divine Hfe, all 
failure in spiritual work, is owing to this one thing : 
we do not make room for and wait on the Divine 
operation. We seek to do the Divine will without 
the living faith in Him who Himself worketh all 
things after the counsel of His will. 

This faith will teach us to live and work in entire 
dependence on God's working. It will waken and 
strengthen us in that root of all true Christian virtue, 
Humility. It is through this that the angels kept 
their first estate — they live in entire dependence upon 
God's willing and working in them. It was for this 
that the Son assumed the robe of creaturehood, to 
teach us that the life and glory of the creature con- 
sists in every moment receiving from God what we 
are to be, to will or to do. He did nothing of Him- 
self but what the Father showed Him. He judged 
nothing of Himself^ but as He heard so He spake. 
The connection between God and us is to be one of 
never-ceasing receptivity, God every moment im- 
parting the life and strength we need. As we learn 



God Working Out His Own Will 109 

to know God thus, we shall fear nothing so much as 
taking His place, by our work hindering His, and 
so under the guise of doing His will making it im- 
possible for Him to do it. Oh ! let us in deep hu- 
mility and reverence worship and wait on the God 
who worketh all things after the counsel of His will. 
This faith will lead us to true diligence in God's 
service in the blessed confidence of being indeed able 
to do all His will, because what He wills He works 
Himself. At first sight it appears as if this entire 
unceasing dependence upon God will hinder us in 
our work. That is only as long as we do not under- 
stand or believe it fully. But to the upright, who wait 
on God, light will arise. It will be with this even as 
with the truth of faith without works for justifica- 
tion. At first it appears as if this would discourage 
good works in the believer. But as we indeed give 
ourselves away to the blessed truth of faith without 
works for acceptance, we find that it is this very faith 
that is most abundant in producing good works as 
its fruit. Even so, as we accept fully the truth of 
which we were afraid at first sight, that we can do 
nothing of ourselves, and that God must do all, we 
shall experience that the most absolute and unceasing 
dependence is the secret of the most eflfective service. 
As works before faith only hinder, while faith with- 



no Thy Will Be Done 

i' otit works is most fruitful of works, so the attempt 
to work without the fullest and most entire depend- 
ence upon God leads to continual failure, until ceas- 
^'ing from ourselves and our works has brought us 
to yield ourselves unreservedly to God's working, 
there to learn what it means to say : '' I labour, striv- 
ing according to His working, which worketh in me 
mightily/' The faith of our entire impotence and 
dependence upon God becomes the power for our 
highest activity. 

'' Foreordained according to the purpose of Him 
who works all things after the counsel of His will." 
Believer ! the purpose according to and for which you 
have been foreordained, is that of a God who works 
all things after the counsel of His will. Let every 
thought of the will of God be accompanied by the 
faith that He is a God who Himself works all things 
that He wills. All goodness and power are His, to 
be received direct from Him alone through Christ 
I Jesus. Worship Him with a holy fear, lest, like 
I Martha you grieve your Lord by your much serving, 
instead of waiting, like Mary, for what He can work 
in you. What God hath joined together let no man 
put asunder: God working His will in man by the 
Holy Spirit; man working out the will of God has 
wrought in him in secret, into daily life and duty. 



XVII 

UNDERSTANDING THE WILL OF GOD 

" Be not foolish, but understand what the will of the 
Lord is/' — Eph. v. 17. 

IN the preceding chapter I spoke of the three 
passages in this Epistle on the will of God. The 
first lifted us up into the eternal glory, to worship 
God, of whose glory that will is the revelation, and 
who Himself works it out in time. The last will lead 
down to the hut and the burden of the slave, and 
show us how even there in the most commonplace 
everyday life, the will of God may be done on earth 
as in heaven. Our present subject stands between 
the two as the indispensable link. It is only as I 
know the will of God, both in the place it has in His 
life, and is to have in mine, that I can appreciate the 
blessedness and fulfil the duty of ever only doing the 
will of the Father. It is the danger of neglecting 
the careful study to know all that God's will implies, 
that makes Paul write, " Be not foolish, but under- 
stand what the will of the Lord is." 

'' Be not fooHsh/' In our conceit that, with our 
III 



112 Thy Will Be Done 

Christian education, our common sense, our daily 
Bible reading, we know well enough what God's will 
must be, we prove that we are as fools, without the 
wisdom of God guiding us. '' Let no man deceive 
himself. If any man thinketh that he is wise in this 
world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise. 
If any man thinketh he knoweth anything, he know- 
eth nothing yet as he ought to know." Let us be- 
ware of the folly of thinking we know the will of 
God. Let us become fools indeed, in the sense of our 
great ignorance, and seek the Divine teaching which 
alone can rightly reveal the Divine will. 

" Be not foolish, but understand what the will of 
the Lord is.'' To understand a thing means, not only 
to know its outward form, but something of its true 
nature, its inner meaning and working. It is only as 
the believer seeks a spiritual insight into God's will, 
that the doing of it will become the heavenly joy it 
is meant to be. Let us consider what are some of the 
chief elements of the true understanding of God's 
will. 

Think of it, "first of all, in connection with God 
Himself. His will is the power by which He deter- 
mines what He is to do^ and what is to be done by 
His creatures. In that will all His goodness and 
wisdom, love and power are revealed ; the knowledge 



Understanding the Will of God 113 

of that will opens to the creature the very heart of 
God. In the surrender to and worship of that will 
angels and men rise into Hving fellowship w^ith God. 
Over the carrying out of that will God Himself 
watches. What the Divine Wisdom has planned, 
Divine Power will perform. Never for a moment 
can the will of God be separated from God Himself ; 
if you would understand that will, never think of it 
but as the symbol of the presence of the Living God 
Himself. Always seek to see God in His will. 

Think of it then as made known in His Word, 
The w^ords of Holy Scripture for the most part are 
plain and simple, so as to be understood of all. And 
yet because they contain the mystery of Divine wis- 
dom, the understanding of the meaning of the words 
does not at all ensure the real spiritual understanding 
or apprehension of God's will. The words need to 
be taken into the heart, into the faith and love and 
obedience of man's whole being, and God's Divine 
working through them needs to be waited for, before 
we can fully understand God's will. The very same 
Spirit which, having searched the deep things of 
God, inspired the Word, must give His light and life 
in the depths of our heart too, if the will of God is 
really to become our will. Without this all our 
knowledge is merely intellectual and superficial. It 



114 Thy Will Be Done 

is only God working His will into our will, and our 
will accepting it heartily, that can fit us to under- 
stand what the will of the Lord is. The will, the in- 
tense desire and determination to do all God's will, 
is the secret of knowing it. 

Think of that will specially as embodied in Christ 
Jesus, He is the Word of God, the visible image of 
the hidden glory of God's will. As man, He came to 
show us how it is the calling and the blessedness of 
the creature to give itself up wholly to the will of 
God, and do nothing of itself, and how it may count 
\ most confidently on God Himself working in it both 
' to will and to do all His will. As our Redeemer, 
He died to deliver us from our own will, and now 
leads us in the path of dying to self, to live and do 
God's will alone. Any attempt to understand the 
will of God, apart from its intimate union with the 
Son of God our Saviour, ends in foolishness. It is 
in living union zmth Jesus alone, that either light or 
strength for knowing and doing the Father's will 
can come. 

Understand what the will of the Lord is. Think 
of its claim on your whole life. You cannot attempt 
fully to yield to or rejoice in that claim until you 
see that it rests in the New Testament upon the fact 
that the renewed will is a ray of the Divine will itself, 



Understanding the Will of God 1 1 5 

taking possession of you, of your inner being, and 
from within enabling you to love God's will as 
wholly and as naturally as you formerly loved your 
self-will. The Three-One God has begun His own 
life in you ; His will and the power that works it out 
are in you; in the faith of that admit heartily the 
claim of God's will to have complete dominion. See, 
and say, that there is to be nothing in your life that 
is not to be under the control, or rather, the inspira- 
tion of God's will. In the faith of this living root of 
God's will possessing you, your will and His inex- 
tricably intertwined, look upon the Word with its ex- 
ceeding breadth covering every possible position, and 
upon your daily life with its innumerable needs and 
duties, and understand how the will of God can be 
carried out through all. '' Created in Christ Jesus 
unto good works which God hath foreordained that 
you should walk in them," you can count upon the 
Holy Spirit to lead you into all God's perfect will. 

Understand what the will of the Lord is. To 
sum up all, think of God's will not only as having 
come forth from an Infinite Love, as revealed and 
embodied in the written and the Eternal Word, as 
claiming your whole Hfe down to its minutest details, 
but, above all, as the promise of what God Himself 
mill work in you. Understand ! the will of God is so 



ii6 Thy Will Be Done 

Divine, and holy, and perfect, only God Himsell 
can work it. You can only work it as He works it 
in you by His Holy Spirit. The stronger and more 
unceasing and more joyfully confident your faith in 
God's working all His will in you becomes, the more 
will you know that it is possible for you to do that 
will. " According to your faith be it unto you," will 
in this also be made true in you. Standing in the 
full light of the eternal love as it shines on you from 
heaven, you will find that light is cast upon the whole 
of the Word and of life. And you will then begin to 
understand what the will of the Lord is. The most 
wonderful, beautiful, blessed thing in the universe. 
The one thing to be sought and loved, to be done 
or suffered. The one thing worth living and dying 
for. 



XVIII 

DOING THE WILL OF GOD FROM THE HEART 

" Servants, be obedient unto your masters, in singleness 
of your heart, as unto Christ ; not in the way of eye service^ 
as men pleasers, but as servants of Christ, doing the will of 
God from the heart; with goodwill doing service as unto 
the Lord, and not unto men." — Eph. vi. 5-7. 

THE importance of the teaching these wordi 
contain can hardly be overrated. They tell 
us that not only when we are fulfilling some direct 
command, but equally when we are doing our com- 
mon daily work, all is to be done, may be done, as 
the will of God. They tell us that this cannot be 
done except as it is done in singleness of heart, and 
from, the heart, with the joyful and loving consent 
of our whole being. They tell us that the strength 
thus to act is to be found in doing all in Christ's 
presence and unto Him. They teach us, too, how 
the most common daily life, with its drudgery, or 
even its oppression, may be transfigured into the 
work of Heaven — doing the will of God. 

The passage depves special force from the fact 
117 



ii8 Thy Will Be Done 

that it was addressed to slaves. At that time almost 
all servants were slaves, entirely, even with their life, 
at the disposal of their masters, and with no rights 
in law. Many of the early Christians were slaves, 
of the base and despised whom God had chosen. 
Their servitude was often harsh and thankless, and 
the very liberty and brotherhood which the Gospel 
preached would only make some of them feel all the 
more the bondage they endured. To such Paul 
writes to be obedient to their masters, as unto Christ, 
and to perform all their service as the will of God 
from the heart. If this was expected of these slaves, 
just come out of heathenism, in circumstances of such 
difficulty, it is surely time that our Christianity had 
learned the lesson that everything we do, even the 
compulsory or ill-requited service of a hard master, 
is to be done as the will of God. 

And how can this disposition be attained? Only 
in one way. By heartily accepting any position into 
which Providence brings us as God's will for us. 
Then the work we have to do in that position will be 
God's will for us. In our opening chapter we saw^ 
that one of the first lessons in the Christian life is to 
accept every trouble that comes to us from the mis- 
takes of ourselves or others or the trial of circum- 
stances as God's appointment. His Providence is 



Doing the Will of God from the Heart 119 

His will for us. This alone can prevent the irritation 
and anger and fretfulness that so often embitters life, 
and clouds the sense of God's favour. Nothing un- 
der heaven can then disturb our faith or peace : to see 
God in all gives rest and hope. Every work we have 
to perform, however unpleasant, however unjust or 
ill-rewarded, becomes, as long as God allows it, His 
will for us. To do it as such makes it easy and 
makes it holy, a well-pleasing sacrifice. And if this 
be true of the work of a slave, much more does it hold 
good of all the duties of daily life. In housekeeping 
and business, in all the thousandfold work or service 
in earning a livelihood or fulfilling a calling — every- 
thing must, may be done as the will of God. 

The thought at once suggests itself of this demand 
being too high and hard. Who can always be re- 
membering, with so much to occupy and disturb, that 
this common work is all God's will? There is only 
one w^ay to succeed in doing this, and that is to do the 
work ''in singleness of heart/' ''from the heart/' 
The heart means desire, will, love, delight, joy. What 
we do from the heart is a pleasure. The only religion 
that satisfies God is that of the heart ; that is why He 
asks us to love Him with the whole heart. As long 
as we only take God's will as a law that we are 
obhged to obey for our own safety and happiness, or 



I20 Thy Will Be Done 

to prove our faith and gratitude, the doing of it is a 
burden. But when we take it into our heart as a 
thing we delight in, and cannot have too much of, 
as what we have given our life up to, everything is 
welcome that gives us an opportunity for doing more 
of that blessed will, for keeping our devotion to it 
unbroken. 

'' Doing the will of God from the heart.'* God 
not only asks the heart ; He has promised to put His 
law into our heart. God wants the heart, and noth- 
ing less can please Him. He has therefore made 
provision for securing it. He sends forth the Spirit 
of His Son into our heart. Let us believe in the 
Holy Spirit dwelling in us, and imparting the love of 
God. Let us in that faith worship and give ourselves 
away to '' the beautiful, sweet will of God," and 
cherish it as our choicest treasure and chief desire. 
As it gets possession of the heart, and opens itself 
in it, the heart that has learnt to adore its glory in 
God will learn to welcome every trace of it on earth, 
and we shall find ourselves doing the hardest service 
in singleness of heart, with the heart only set upon 
pleasing God, in very deed doing the will of God 
from the heart. 

Our text tells us one thing more — how the doing 
the will of God will always be connected with the 



Doing the Will of God from the Heart 121 

presence of Christ. The will of God and the Son of 
God are inseparable. Jesus is the will of God. He 
did it. He works that will from heaven. His great 
work as Saviour is to secure our doing it. And so 
Paul writes to the slaves : '' Be obedient to your 
masters as unto Christ; not as men-pleasers, but as 
servants of Christ; with goodwill doing service as 
unto the Lord/' Here we have the thrice-repeated 
thought that in the daily drudgery the animating mo- 
tive is to be that it is a service rendered to the Lord 
we love. His presence and His pleasure are to be our 
inspiration. The poor slave could understand that. 
The eye of the slave-master, with the fear of displeas- 
ing him, spurred on to continuous effort. The pres- 
ence of Jesus Christ, the sense of being His servant, 
the bond-slave of His love, the glory of pleasing 
Him, can as unceasingly fill the heart and carry you 
through all the day, doing work for men, as servants 
of Christ. The presence of Christ fits us for this. 
He knows what the difficulties and temptations are in 
the way of always doing God's will. He knows how 
the victory can be obtained, and the will of God 
always be done. He lives to secure to us the strength 
and the victory. If we give ourselves to nothing 
less than to be wholly His servants in ever doing 
God's will alone, if we trust Him to maintain His 



122 Thy Will Be Done 

own presence in us all the day, we can know the joy 
of His service in His strength. 

'' Doing the will of God from the heart." Let 
God, let Jesus Christ, God's Son, let God's love, have 
the heart, the whole heart, and nothing less, and 
God's will will be done by us on earth, as it is in 
heaven. God Himself will work it in us, and amid 
all the changing circumstances of life there will be 
one thing that never changes — our place of rest in 
the centre of God's will. 



XIX 
FILLED WITH THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD'S WILL 

" We do not cease to pray for you, that ye may be filled 
with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and 
understanding." — Col. i. 9. 

TO understand the place of this prayer in the 
Christian life, and to realise how being '' filled 
with the knowledge of God's will in all spiritual wis- 
dom '' lies at the very root of its growth and health, 
just notice what a beautiful description of the walk 
of a believer follows on this prayer as the blessing it 
is meant to bring. The result of being filled with 
the knowledge of God's will will be, that we '' walk 
worthily of the Lord unto all pleasing ; that we bear 
fruit in every good work; that we increase in the 
knowledge of God ; that we are strengthened with all 
power according to the might of His glory, unto all 
patience and long-suffering with joy, giving thanks 
unto the Father." Walking worthily of God and 
pleasing Him; bearing fruit; increasing in the 
knowledge of God; being strengthened with all 

123 



124 Thy Will Be Done 

might; all patience and long-suffering with joy and 
thanksgiving — such is the sure portion of a soul 
'' filled with the knowledge of God's will in all spirit- 
ual wisdom and understanding." It is the will of 
God that all these things should be in us and abound. 
Where the heart is filled and possessed with the 
knowledge of all this indeed being God's will, the 
life will be filled with its fruits. 

We have before spoken of the knowledge of God's 
will. The great truth suggested by these words in 
regard to it is that it must be in '' all spiritual wisdom 
and understanding.'' There is a wisdom and an un- 
derstanding of the truths of Scripture which is not 
spiritual. The human mind can study and apprehend 
the doctrines the Bible teaches concerning God and 
the Divine life in man, without having any true ap- 
prehension of them in their quickening life and power. 
Christians, to a very large extent, study their Bible, 
listen to preaching, read religious books, in the confi- 
dence that they are earnestly desirous of knowing the 
truth, and able to some extent to grasp it, while the 
real spiritual wisdom and understanding to make it 
their own, to prove its power in their life, is not 
waited for from God. They wonder why so much 
Bible knowledge does not make them humble and 
lowly as they would like to be. They never know 



Filled with the Knowledge of God's Will 125 

that it is simply because their knowledge of God's 
will is in the power of human wisdom and the natural 
understanding. And such knowledge is powerless to 
work effectually what God's Word is promised to 
work. 

In His farewell discourse our Lord said to His 
disciples, " The Holy Spirit shall teach you all things, 
and bring to your remembrance all that I said unto 
you. The Spirit of Truth will guide you into all 
truth.'' To the Holy Spirit alone was thus committed 
the power of teaching Divine truth and leading men 
into it. He was to teach all things, to guide into all 
truth; no truth could be known truly without His 
teaching. As the indwelling Spirit, possessing and 
renewing the heart. He alone could so impart the 
truth, that it became part of our very nature, giving 
both the will and the power to obey it. Our Lord 
had taught His disciples many things while on earth 
with them. But how little had they understood? 
Still less were they able to obey His commands of 
self-denial and meekness, and humility and love. 
With the Holy Spirit coming down from heaven into 
their hearts as the power of God, and the Spirit of 
His Son, the words of God would come to them in 
their spiritual, supernatural, quickening power. 

We need to study this. As no one can worship 



126 Thy Will Be Done 

God in spirit and in truth but through the Holy 
Spirit, so no one, not even a true Christian, can have 
any spiritual understanding of God's will but by the 
Holy Spirit. The one reason that our knowledge of 
God's will is so defective in its extent and power, that 
we see so little beauty in God's will, that we so little 
delight, or ever succeed in fulfilling it, is simply this : 
the knowledge is not in all spiritual wisdom and un- 
derstanding. 

And what is needed to get this spiritual wisdom 
through the Holy Spirit's teaching? One great 
thing — we must be spiritual men. Paul says to the 
Corinthians, " I could not speak unto you as unto 
spiritual, but as unto carnal." They were unfit for 
full spiritual teaching, because they were not spirit- 
ually minded. This suggests to us the law of all the 
Holy Spirit's teaching. He cannot communicate 
spiritual truths to those whose lives are worldly, 
selfish, carnal. He asks a disposition that at least 
longs to be spiritual. It is in the heart He gives 
His teaching. The man who yields his life to be led 
and ruled by Him will be taught by Him. Such a 
one can be filled with the knowledge of God's will. 

Mark the word filled. It points to an emptying 
out and putting aside of all else. It suggests a heart 
given up wholly and entirely to the will of God. It 



Filled with the Knowledge of God's Will 127 

promises a life in which the will of God shall spon- 
taneously enter the minutest details of daily life — the 
whole heart filled with ii and with nothing else. It 
is not the thought of a multitude of commandments 
all packed together, but of God's grand will, as the 
controlling power of the life, inspiring and animating 
the whole being. The two thoughts accompany and 
are the complement of each other — the whole being 
surrendered to be spiritual and receive spiritual wis- 
dom, and the whole being thus filled with the knowl- 
edge of God's will. 

For this Paul did not cease to pray and make re- 
quest for the Colossians. Let us pray for God's 
Church and ourselves, that the spiritual filling with 
the knowledge of God's will may be given us. The 
blessing is waiting for us ; the Father delights to give 
it. It is our birthright — a Divine birth needs and 
has the promise of a Divine education. The Spirit 
through whom we received the Divine life can alone, 
will most surely, guide us unto all its riches. Let us 
pray unceasingly, honestly, believingly, to be iiUed 
with the knowledge of God's will in all spiritual wis- 
dom and understanding. 

In heaven the will of God is done. Nothing but 
the heavenly Hfe can do it. None but God's Spirit 
can do God's will. Let us not expect to know or do 



128 Thy Will Be Done 

it without the heavenly life working in us by the 
Spirit come from heaven into our heart. The heav- 
enly life dehghts in God's will. This is one of the 
great lessons that the Church needs to learn, that the 
universal neglect of so much of God's will, and the 
universal complaint of lack of power to perform, has 
but one cause : the heavenly life in the power of the 
Holy Spirit is so little known or sought. 

Brother, learn well the lesson that no knowledge 
and no book can profit thee except as it reminds thee 
of the need of the One Only Teacher, the Spirit of 
Truth, and leads thee in inward adoration and teach- 
ableness to wait for the hidden spiritual wisdom 
which He gives in the inward part. 



XX 

STANDING PERFECT IN ALL THE WILL OF GOD 

" Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ Jesus, 
saluteth you, always striving for you in his prayers, that ye 
may stand perfect and fully assured in all the will of God/' 
— CoL. iv. 12. 

IN the first chapter of the Epistle, we had Paul 
praying, here we have Epaphras. The prayers 
of both had reference to this one thing — of such 
supreme consequence is it in the Christian life — 
the will of God. Paul prayed that their hearts might 
be filled with the spiritual knowledge of God's will; 
then they would walk worthy of the Lord to all pleas- 
ing. Epaphras prays that their lives may be so filled 
with that will, that they may stand complete in all 
the will of God. Paul says that he does not cease to 
pray thus. Of Epaphras, he says that he always 
strives for them in his prayers. In both cases the re- 
lation to God's will is to be no partial or divided one 
— but whole and entire, as expressed by the word all. 
Paul asks that they may be filled with the knowledge 
of His will in all spiritual wisdom, to walk worthy 

129 



130 Thy Will Be Done 

of the Lord unto all pleasing. Epaphras strives for 
them in his prayers that they may stand complete 
in all the will of God. Nothing less than all God's 
will is to be the standard, the desire, the prayer, the 
hope of the believer. 

To stand perfect in all the mill of God — the be- 
liever's only standard. How can it be otherwise? 
The will of God is one whole, all equally Divine, and 
beautiful, and blessed. All, all of equal obligation, 
equally needful for our peace and perfection, with 
equal provision made for its performance in the grace 
that is in Christ Jesus. The will of God is so en- 
tirely one with the nature, the perfection, and the 
love of God, that to neglect or refuse any part of it 
is making it impossible for God fully to reveal Him- 
self to us and to bless us. As perfect and complete 
as the will of God is as a whole, ought to be the be- 
liever's acceptance of and surrender to it as his only 
standard. 

Paul and Epaphras regarded this as an attainable 
measure of perfection among the Colossians. There 
are many Christians who admit that the words ex- 
press the Scripture standard of duty, but rob that 
admission of all its power by counting it impossible. 
The standard is only an ideal one, not really prac- 
ticable or practical. They regard it very much as 



Standing Perfect in all the Will of God 131 

the law of Moses, with its demands that never can 
be fulfilled. They do not understand the words, 
'' Ye are not under law," which demands w^hat you 
cannot do, and gives no power to do, '' but under 
grace,'' which demands only what it will give and 
work in you, and so enables you to do all it demands. 
All His will is God's standard for us actually asked 
and provided for; let it be ours too. Your Father 
asks nothing less ; let nothing less be what you ask of 
Him and offer Him. 

To stand complete in all the will of God — the be- 
liever's one desire. Desire is the one great power in \ 
the world that urges and enables men to undertake I 
and accomplish what at first sight appears impossi- ' 
ble. When a man has set his heart upon a thing, dif- 
ficulties only rouse his energy and increase his power. 
Oh that Christians might be taught and trained to 
set their heart upon '' all the will of God " as their 
highest and only blessedness, upon '' standing perfect 
in it " as the one hope of their calling ! It is to be 
feared that the preaching of the will of God has not 
had the same place as the preaching of the grace of 
God. Men have not seen that as the grace is nothing 
but the will of God manifested, and as it came 
through Christ doing that will, so its one object is 
to unite us with that will, and have it done In us 



132 Thy Will Be Done 

as it is 'done in heaven. Doing the will of God has 
been something additional, a supplement to what the 
grace of God has done, an expression of gratitude, 
instead of being the very door into all the love, and 
salvation, and blessedness out of which the grace 
came and into which it leads. If we understood 
this, how every desire for help from God for salva- 
tion, and happiness, and the enjoyment of His love, 
would be identified with the standing complete in all 
that will in which God is revealed and is alone to be 
found. Let us set our heart upon this. 

To stand perfect in all the zvill of God — the be- 
liever's continual prayer. The teaching about the 
knowledge of God's will, and the standing complete 
in God's will, comes in connection with the telling of 
Paul's unceasing prayer and Epaphras' striving al- 
ways. It is not earnest thought, or clear apprehen- 
sion, or strong desire, that will bring us what we 
need — ^but unceasing prayer. Doing the will of God 
is the life of heaven, because God is there, and works 
His will without hindrance in ah the holy spirits who 
are wholly yielded up to Him and ever wait upon 
Him. It is from God in heaven that this heavenly 
life of doing His will must come down. And it 
will come down and be carried on and maintained in 
us just in proportion as we too wait upon God, yield 



Standing Perfect in all the Will of God 133 

ourselves to Him, and continue offered up to His 
Holy Spirit to work in us. Whether it be in the 
quiet, steady perseverance of our daily prayer, or in 
the fervent striving in seasons when the need and 
the desire are specially felt, or in the inward suppHca- 
tion of the heart that prays without ceasing — it is 
only the life that is continually looking upward, and 
depending alone upon God's working His own will 
in us, that will feel that God's standard is not too 
high, because what the word of His mouth demands, 
the power of His hand performs. ''' 

To stand complete in all the will of God — the be- 
liever's sure hope. Paul and Epaphras were praying 
out of their blessed experience. We, alas, have 
grown so accustomed to use words in prayer for 
things we never expect. They lived so under the 
power of the Holy Spirit, they saw, notwithstanding 
so much to grieve and disappoint them, some whom 
they could call spiritual men, and they knew^ that in 
answer to their prayer it would be given — men 
'' filled with the knowledge of God's will, in all spirit- 
ual wisdom," men '' standing complete in all the will 
of God." Let us pray without ceasing, let us strive 
always, for the churches or the saints with whom 
we are connected, that these two prayers may be 
fulfilled in them. Let us to that end ask God to re- 



134 Thy Will Be Done 

veal in ourselves and our experience their full truth 
and meaning. Amid all disappointment let us say: 
My soul, hope thou in God ! I shall yet praise Him 
for the help of His countenance ! Let us set our 
hope upon God, who worketh all things after the 
purpose of His will. " God must ever be God alone. 
Heaven and the heavenly nature are His, and must 
for ever be received only from Him, and for ever 
be only preserved by an entire trust in Him.'' God 
alone can work His will in us. In a heart that prays 
and waits without ceasing in dependence upon Him, 
He can and will do it. Oh ! let us believe that these 
precious words of Epaphras' prayer are not vain ; in 
them the Holy Spirit reveals the sure hope of every 
believer who will trust God. Let us not doubt, but 
*' stand complete and fully assured in all the will of 
God." 



XXI 

THE WILL OF GOD, YOUR SANCTIFICATION 

" For this is the will of God, even your sanctification." — 
Thess. iv. 3. 

THE Apostle had closed the third chapter of this 
Epistle with the wondrous prayer for the 
Thessalonian believers that the Lord might '' estab- 
lish their hearts itnblameable in holiness before our 
God and Father/' He proceeds in chapter iv. to 
urge them to a walk well-pleasing to God. He be- 
gins by specially warning against two sins, unclean- 
ness and fraud, iv. 3-7. And then just as he had 
pleaded with God to establish them unblameable in 
holiness, so he pleads with them to remember and 
yield to the blessed truth : ^* This is the will of God, 
your sanctification." '' God hath not called us for 
uncleanness, but for sanctification.'^ The great plea 
against sin is that we are called to be holy. And 
the great power of holiness is that it is God's will 
for us. 

And what is holiness? God alone is the Holy 
One. There is none holy but the Lord. There is 

135 



136 Thy Will Be Done 

no holiness but His. And nothing can be holy except 
as He makes it holy. " Be ye holy, for I am holy." 
'' I am the Lord which sanctify you." Holiness is 
the very nature of God, inseparable from His be- 
ing, and can only be communicated by His commu- 
nicating Himself and His own life. We are in 
Christ, who is made of God unto us sanctification. 
The Spirit of God is the Spirit of Holiness. We 
are God's '' elect in sanctification of the Spirit," 
'' chosen to salvation through sanctification of the 
Spirit." The Three-One God is the Thrice Holy 
One, and Father, Son, and Spirit each share in mak- 
ing us holy. Our part in sanctification consists in 
our recognising how God makes us holy. We have 
been sanctified in Christ Jesus. The new nature we 
have derived from Him has been created in true 
holiness. Our holy calling is in the power of the 
new. Divine, holy nature, to act out its impulses and 
principles. Our justification and our sanctification 
are equally in Christ, by union with Him, and there- 
fore equally of faith. It is as we believe in God 
working in us, through Christ and the Spirit, that the 
inflow of the holy life from above is renewed, and 
that we have the courage and the power to live out 
the precepts that reveal the way in which it is to act. 
Like the whole of salvation, sanctification, or the 



The Will of God, Your Sanctification 137 

life of holiness, is the result of man's co-operating 
with God. That means first of all his entire depend- 
ence on, and surrender to, the Divine operation, as 
the only source of goodness or strength. And then 
the acting out in life and conduct all that God has 
worked within us. 

And what is now the help we can get from the 
words — This is the will of God, your sanctification? 
The first thought is that of the Divine obligation of 
holiness, God wills it. It is enough to regard it 
in the other aspects in which it can be presented. It 
is indeed an essential element of the Christian Hfe, 
the great proof of our gratitude for our deliverance 
from the guilt of sin, indispensable to true peace and 
happiness, our only preparation for heaven. All this 
is of great importance. But at the back of all this 
there is something of still greater force. We need to 
realise that God wills it. In eternity God predes- 
tinated us to be holy, '' we are elect accordmg to 
the foreknowledge of God in sanctification of the 
Spirit.'' (Eph. i. 4; i Pet. i. 2.) God's whole 
purpose as a holy God, was to make us holy, as He 
is holy. The whole of redemption was ordered 
with a view to this. It is not only one of His 
commands, among many, it is the command which 
includes all. The whole being and character of God 



138 Thy Will Be Done 

proclaim it; the whole nature and aim of redemp- 
tion insist upon it; believers! God wills your 
sanctification. Worship God in His holiness, until 
every thought of God in His glory and grace 
is connected with the deep conviction: This blessed 
God wills my holiness. Rest not until your will 
has surrendered unconditionally to the will of God, 
and found its true destiny in receiving that Divine 
will and working it out. 

A second thought that suggests itself is that of 
the Divine possibility of holiness. We have learnt 
in our meditations that the will of God is not only 
a Divine purpose of what God is to do, or a Divine 
precept as to what we are to do, but a Divine power 
that works out its own purpose. All that God wills 
He works. Not, indeed, in those who refuse to 
accept or submit to that will. They have the power 
to resist it. But in those who yield their consent, 
who love that will and long that it should be done 
'\ on earth as in heaven, God Himself worketh out all 
things after the purpose of His will. In every man 
with a sound, strong will, it seeks at once to embody 
itself in action, and to effect what had been counted 
an object of desire. God works in us both to will 
and to do. When He has worked the willing. He 
delights, if He be waited on and yielded to, to work 



The Will of God, Your Sanctification 139 

the doing. When, by His grace; the believer wills 
as God wills, when he has accepted God's will for 
sanctification as his own will, he can count upon 
God's working it. God wills it with all the energy 
of His Divine being. God can as little cease work- 
ing holiness as He can cease being holy or be- 
ing God. He wills our sanctification; and if we 
will but will it too, in the faith of the new nature 
in which the Holy Spirit works, and yield our- 
selves to the will of Omnipotent Love in the assur- 
ance of His working in us, we shall experience how 
true and blessed the message is. God wills, and 
therefore most certainly works your sanctification. 

The third lesson suggested by our text is — the 
Divine means of holiness. The will of God is your 
sanctification — that is, all that God wills has this 
one object, will secure this one result. Whether it 
be His will in the eternal counsel, or here in time 
in Providence, whether in mercy or in judgment, 
whether in precept or promise, all that God wills 
concerning us is our sanctification. This gives a 
new meaning, and its true glory, to every command 
of Scripture. The commands of God have unspeak- 
able value, as marking out for us the path of safety 
and of life, as guiding us to all that is lovely and 
of good report. But here is their highest glory: 



140 Thy Will Be Done 

through them the Holy One seeks to make us 
partakers of His own hoHness. Do let us learn to 
regard every indication of God's will, in Scripture 
or in Nature, in things great or little, as the will of 
the Holy One coming to make us holy. Let every 
thought of God's will fill us with the longing and 
the hope to be holy. And let every thought of 
holiness lead us to the study of, and the delight in, 
and the faithful doing of, God's will. Let every sin 
that God's Word forbids, such as those Paul men- 
tions of uncleanness and fraud, be put far from us. 
Let everything that is of the earthly, carnal, selfish 
nature be put oflf, that the whole spirit, soul, and 
body may be sanctified. Let every command that 
points to the true Christ-like life — humility, and 
love, and self-sacrifice — be welcomed as the channel 
of God's holiness. The desire after, and delight and 
faith in, God's holiness and God's will become 
inseparably one. Let all who would experience this 
remember one thing. It is because it is God's will 
and God's holiness that there is power, and life and 
blessing in it. Everything depends upon our know- 
ing God and waiting on Him, coming under the 
operation of His Holy Presence and Power. As 
we know Him as the Living God, and have inter- 
course with Him as the Holy, Loving, Almighty, 



The Will of God, Your Sanctification 141 

ever-present and ever-working One, His will and 
His holiness will become to us heavenly realities, 
and we shall know how certainly, how blessedly, His 
will is our sanctification. 



XXII 

UNCEASING THANKSGIVING THE WILL OF GOD 

" In everything give thanks : for this is the will of God 
in Christ Jesus to youward." — i Thess. v. i8. 

IN everything give thanks — that means a life 
of unceasing joy. The bestowment of a gift 
makes me glad. Giving thanks is the expression 
of that gladness to the giver. For what in the gift 
he has bestowed on me, for what he has proved 
himself to be as a friend, my happiness offers him 
all it has to give, all he desires — the acknowledg- 
ment of indebtedness and obligation and grateful 
love. Every father does his utmost to make his 
children happy ; he loves not only to see them happy, 
but to see them connect their happiness with him- 
/ self and his love. It is the will of God that in 
everything, m every circumstance and condition, 
the whole life of His child should be one of un- 
ceasing praise and thanksgiving. If it be not al- 
ways so with us, let us set ourselves to learn the 
lesson: In everything give thanks: for this is the 
will of God in Christ Jesus to youward. 

142 



Unceasing Thanksgiving 143 

In everything give thanks — there is good rea- 
son for it. God is not a hard master, who reaps 
where He has not sown. He never commands 
joy without giving abundant cause for it. He does 
not expect thanks where there is nothing to thank 
for. He would have us remember that, in the 
most trying circumstances and the deepest sorrow, 
there is cause for thanksgiving infinitely out- 
weighing the reason for mourning. Whatever 
we lose, God and His love are still left us. The 
very loss is meant to make the love more precious; 
the trial is love seeking to give itself more completely 
to us. Whatever we lose, there is always the un- 
speakable gift — ^God's own Son to be our portion 
and our friend. Whatever we lose, there is always 
a peace that cannot be taken away, a joy that is/ 
unspeakable, a riches of glory that will supply every 
need, an abounding grace that perfects Christ's 
strength in our weakness. There are always the 
exceeding great and precious promises, and the 
heavenly treasures that can never pass away. God 
is educating us, through loss and trial, into the full 
enjoyment of our heavenly heritage and the per- 
fect fitness for His own fellowship. So let us believe 
that the command is most reasonable, and say that this 
will of God, in everything give thanks, is our will too. 



144 Thy Will Be Done 

In everything give thanks — this is both the mark 
and the means of a vigorous Christian life. It 
draws us off from ourselves, and fixes the heart 
upon God. It lifts us above the world, and makes 
us more than conquerors through Him who loved 
us. It places our peace, our happiness, our life, 
beyond the reach of circumstances. So far from 
rendering us indifferent to the suffering of our 
fellow-men, it fills us with hope in seeking to re- 
lieve them, it teaches us what joy there is in the 
kindness and love of God, and makes that the key- 
note of our life. It gives wings to our prayer, 
our faith, our love, to live the true heavenly life in 
God's presence and worship. It enables us to con- 
quer every temptation with the hallelujah of victory. 
In everything give thanks. God Himself will 
work it in you. This is the will of God in Christ 
^lesus to youward. We have seen more than once 
f that the will of God is a living, almighty power, 

I working out its own purpose with our intelligent 

I 
consent. We are co-workers with God — that means, 

not that He does part and we do part, but that He 

does all in us, and we do all through Him. It 

means that He works in us to will and to do, 

and that we, through faith in His working, in the 

power that worketh in us, work out His will. Just 



Unceasing Thanksgiving 145 

because it is the will of God, the believing soul is 
sure that it can be. It is the will of God in Christ, 
This expression is so frequent that its meaning is 
passed over. All that God is and does to us, He is 
and does through our Lord Jesus. The Father does 
nothing in us but through the Son. The Son does 
nothing but as the Father does it through Him. Our 
experience of God's work in us depends upon our 
abiding in Christ, our drawing and remaining near 
to God in and through Christ. To a soul seeking 
its life in Christ alone, the will of God ensures a life 
of unceasing praise and thanks. 

In everything give thanks. It needs a life of 
entire consecration. Many of God's commands be- 
come an unbearable burden, an impossible strain, 
because we look to the feeble, sickly life to do 
what only the strength of vigorous health can 
perform. We cannot take up one part of God's J 
will, and do it when we please. A life of un- 
divided and absolute surrender to all God's will j 
is the condition of being able to perform any 1 
part of it effectively. Every command to perform 
some special part of God's . will is a call to in- 
quire whether we have accepted all His will as 
the law of our life. The soul that has done this, 
that is learning the lesson of daily guidance for 



146 Thy Will Be Done 

daily duty, and is prepared to meet every new de- 
mand with the question as to its implicit submission 
to that will, and its unquestioning confidence in 
the provision of sufficient strength, all settled, has 
found the secret of obedience to this command too. 
When God is known as our exceeding joy, when 
a walk in the light of His countenance all the day is 
counted equally a privilege and an indispensable 
necessity, the giving of thanks in everything is not 
looked upon as a hopeless attainment. Because it is 
the will of a loving and Almighty Father, that 
will can be done. 

In everything give thanks. These are indeed the 
Christians the world stands in need of. It is the 
happy Christian — not the happy man who happens 
also to be a Christian, but the Christian who proves 
that his happiness is in God, and who lives the life 
of joy and praise because he lives in God's presence, 
— who will find the joy of the Lord his strength 
in God's service, and who will be the best witness to 
what the grace of God can do to give true joy and 
blessing. It is the will of God in Christ to usward 
that this unceasing thanksgiving should be our life 
— let us rest content with nothing less. 



XXIII 
THE SALVATION OF ALL THE WILL OF GOD 

" I exhort therefore that supplications, prayers, interces- 
sions, thanksgivings be made for all men. This is good 
and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour, who willeth 
that all men should be saved." — i Tim. ii. 1-4. 

" The Lord is long suffering to youward, not wishing that 
any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.'' 
— 2 Pet. iii. 9. 

AFTER Paul had urged that supplications, 
prayers, and intercessions should be made 
for all men, he reminds us that we may do so in 
confident assurance that it is good and acceptable 
to God, because He willeth that all men should be 
saved. The knowledge and faith of God's will for 
all is to be the motive and the measure of our 
prayer for all. What God in heaven wills and 
works for His children on earth we are to will 
and work for too. As we enter into His will for 
all, we shall know what we are to do to fulfil that 
will. And as we pray and labour for all, the faith 
in His will for all will inspire us with confidence 

and love. 

147 



148 Thy Will Be Done 

Perhaps the question arises — If God wills the 
salvation of all, how is it that it is not effected? 
What of the doctrine of election, asi Scripture 
teaches it us? And what of the Omnipotence of 
God, which is surely equal to the Love that wills 
the salvation of all? As to election, let us re- 
member that there are mysteries in God and in 
Scripture which are beyond our reach. If there 
are apparently conflicting truths which we cannot 
reconcile, we know that Scripture was not written, 
like a book of science, to satisfy the intellect, but 
as the revelation of the hidden wisdom of God, to 
test and strengthen faith and submission, to waken 
love and childlike teachableness. If we cannot 
understand why His power does not work what 
His will has purposed, we shall find that, as the 
endowment of the creature with a free will, is an 
act by which the will of God has limited itself, 
all that God does or does not do is decided by 
conditions far beyond our ken, and which it needs 
a Divine wisdom to grasp and to order. We shall 
learn that God's will is as much beyond our com- 
prehension as God's being, and that it is our wis- 
dom and safety and happiness to accept every 
revealed truth with the simplicity and the faith of 
little children, and yield ourselves to it to prove its 



The Salvation of All 149 

living power within our hearts. Let us not fear to 
yield ourselves to the uttermost to this blessed word : 
God willeth that all men should be saved. 

God is love. His will is love. As He makes 
His sun to shine on the good and the evil, so His 
love rests upon all. However httle we can under- 
stand why His love is so long-suffering and patient, 
and does not take its power and reign, we believe 
and know the love that God hath to us — a love 
whose measure in heaven is the gift of His Son, 
and on earth every child of man. His love is 
nothing but His will in its Divine energy doing 
its very utmost, in accordance with the Divine law 
by which His relation to His creature is regulated, 
to make men partakers of its blessedness. His will 
is nothing but His love in its infinite patience and 
tenderness delighting to win and bless every heart 
into which it can gain access. If we only knew 
God and His love, how we should look upon every 
man we see as one upon whom that love rests and 
for whom it longs. We should begin to wonder 
at the mystery of grace that has taken up the 
Church, as the body of Christ, as a partner in the 
great work of making that love known, and rendered 
itself dependent upon its faithfulness. And we 
should see that all living to do God's will must lead 



150 Thy Will Be Done 

up to this as its central glory: our doing the will 
\ that wills that all should be saved. 

God willeth that all men should be saved. This 
truth is a supernatural mystery, not to be appre- 
hended but by a spiritual mind through the teach- 
ing of the Holy Spirit. It is in itself so Divine 
and beyond our apprehension, the difficulties that 
surround it are so many and so real, it needs so 
much of time and of the sacrifice of the humble 
loving heart to master its teaching, that to very 
many the words carry but little meaning. To the 
believer, who in very deed seeks to know and to do 
all God's will, they give a new meaning to life. He 
begins to see that this call to love and to save his 
fellow-men is not something accidental or additional 
that, along with other things, goes to make up his 
life, and to which he can devote as much of time 
and thought as he sees fit. He learns that just as 
this loving, saving will of God is the secret source 
of all His will, and rules it all, so this loving, saving 
will is to be the chief thing he lives for too. I have 
been redeemed and organically united to and made 
a member of the saving Christ, who came to do this 
will of the Father. / have been chosen and set apart 
and -fitted for this as the one object of my being in 
the world. I begin to see faintly that the prayer. 



The Salvation of All 151 

Thy will be done! means above everything that I 
give myself for this loving, saving will of God to 
possess, to inspire, to use, if need be to consume me. 
And I feel the need of spelling out the words of the 
sentence till my heart can call them its own: God 
— my God, who liveth in me — willeth^ with His 
whole heart, in that will which He has revealed 
to His people that they may carry it into effect 
— that all m£n, here around me, and to the ends 
of the earth — should be saved, should have everlast- 
ing life. 

Paul wrote these words in connection with a call 
to prayer for all men. Our faith in the truth of 
God's loving, saving will must be put into practice. 
It must stir us to prayer. And prayer will most 
certainly stir us to work. We must not only seek 
to believe and feel the truth of these words, but 
must act. This will of God must be done. Let us 
look upon those around us as the objects of God's 
love, whom His saving will is seeking to reach. 
Let us, as we yield ourselves to this will, go and 
speak to those around us of God's love in Christ. 
It is possible that we are not succeeding in doing 
God's will in our personal life because we neglect 
the chief thing. As we pray to be possessed and 
filled with the knowledge of this will of God, let 



152 Thy Will Be Done 

us in our Sunday-school class, or Gospel work, in 
our efforts for young or old, for poor or rich, seek 
to have hearts filled with this love, tongues that 
speak of Jesus and His salvation, and a will that 
finds its strength in God's own will — that all men 
should be saved. So will our life, and our love, 
and our work, and our will in some measure be 
like that of Jesus Christ — a doing of the Father's 
will, that none of these little ones should perish. 



XXIV 

LO, I COME TO DO THY WILL 

*' Then said I, Lo, I am come to do Thy will, O God. In 
which will we have been sanctified through the offering of 
the body of Jesus Christ, once for all." — Heb. x. 7-10. 

" Lo, I come. I delight to do Thy will, O my God." — 
Ps. xl. 7, 8. 

DAVID had said: Sacrifices and offerings Thou 
wouldest not, neither hadst pleasure therein. 
They had been appointed for a time, as a shadow 
or picture ; they were not what God sought or what 
could please Him; they were not really the will of 
God. David understood that what God wanted 
was the doing of His will, and said: I delight to 
do Thy will, O my God. While saying this of 
himself, he spake it of Christ, in whom alone its 
true fulfilment could be found. They are the great 
words with which Christ coming into the world 
announces His work: Lo, I am come to do Thy 
will, O God. If we are really to penetrate to the 
very heart of what Christ is, and means, of what 
He did for us and does in us, we must seek to 

153 



154 Thy Will Be Done 

know Him as come from heaven to earth to do the 
will of God, and so to restore the doing of God's 
will on earth to the place it has in heaven. 

His doing of God's will is first contrasted with 
the sacrifices and ofiFerings of the Old Testament 
worship, and then specially connected with the 
offering of His own body once for all. Of this 
will of God, as thus done by Him, even unto death, 
we are taught that in it we have been sanctified, 
because by one offering He hath perfected for ever 
them that are sanctified. Let us try and learn the 
great lessons that there are to be found here in 
connection with our study of the will of God 

The doing of God's will is the only worship 
that is pleasing to God, — It was this alone that 
gave their value to the Old Testament sacrifices. 
Not in the costliness or the multitude of the offer- 
ings lay their value, but in the disposition; in 
the contrition, or the faith, or the consecration of 
which they were the expression. Not even in these 
however, except as they were a Divine appointment, 
and were brought in accordance with God's own 
command. If not accompanied by obedience they 
were worse than useless. " Obedience is better 
than sacrifice." " Thou desirest not sacrifice ; Thou 
delightest not in burnt-offering ; the sacrifices of 



Lo, I Come to Do Thy Will 155 

God are a broken heart." It is as far as they were 
the doing of God's will that they were well-pleasing. 
And so they became the symbols of a life given up 
in devotion to God, wholly yielded to His will and 
service. The doing of God's will is the secret of 
acceptable worship. 

Christ came to this world to do the will of God. 
— He came and lived as man to show us that 
the one thing God asks of the creature, that the 
one thing that can bring the creature life and 
blessedness, is the doing of the will of God. With 
this view He not only submitted Himself to all the 
commandments and ordinances of the law; in all 
His life and work, in His eating and speaking, in 
His travels and miracles, He lived a life of absolute 
dependence upon God's guidance — in everything He 
did only God's will. He did all God's will. He 
knew that it was God's will that He should die as 
a propitiation for our sins. As the time came near^ 
and all that that would imply opened up before 
His human nature, He had more than once occasion 
to say: How am I straitened! How is My Soul 
troubled! My Soul is sorrowful even unto death! 
But through it all He thought of God's will; the 
surrender to God's will sustained Him. And He 
gave Himself to be what the sin-offering and burnt- 



156 Thy Will Be Done 

offering had only typified, a sacrifice unto God, 
obedient even unto death. It was this gave His 
inconceivable suffering its inconceivable value; it 
was borne as the will of God, laying God's just 
judgment upon Him that the guilty might go free. 

It is Christ's doing the will of God even unto 
death that has effected our salvation — " In which 
will we have been sanctified through the offering 
of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.'' The 
word sanctified is used here in its larger sense, as it 
includes justification and regeneration, and the whole 
of redemption — our being restored to the fellow- 
ship of God, and taken possession of by Him. The 
great sin of Adam and of mankind was doing 
their own will instead of God's will. The great, 
the only root, of all sin and misery was self-will. 
Jesus Christ came to take away sin. He did so by 
a life and a death of the most perfect sacrifice of 
His will to the will of God. He bore the con- 
sequence, the punishment, the curse that our selt- 
will had brought. Through His perfect obedience to 
God's will He made a perfect atonement for our sin, 
and won for the will of God its place of supremacy 
in this sinful world. He did this by the offering of 
His body, once for all, and so perfected for ever 
them that are sanctified. " By the obedience of 



Lo, I Come to Do Thy Will 157 

one, many are made righteous/' As the partakers 
of a complete and perfect righteousness, won by 
obedience to the will of God, as '' created after the 
image of God in righteousness," their entrance into 
the perfect love and Ufe of God is complete and for 
ever. 

The doing of God's will by which Christ wrought 
out our salvation is now and ever the power of the 
salvation He imparts. — Doing God's will is not only, 
as many think, the price by which salvation was won. 
Doing God's will is salvation itself. In Christ it 
was the power that conquered every temptation to 
self-will, that proved what human life ought really to 
be, that brought a perfect human life and laid it a 
sacrifice at God's feet, that broke for ever the power 
of self-will in its dominion over us. In Christ it 
proved that sacrificing self-will to the very utmost, 
doing the will of God even unto death, is the path to 
the fulness of the life and glory of God. In Christ 
doing the will of God is seen to be the life and joy 
of heaven brought down to earth, and the power to 
rise from earth to heaven. Doing God's will is at 
once the cause, the object^ the power, the blessed- 
ness of salvation. 

It is only by Christ in us that we can in any 
measure do the will of God on earth as it is done 



158 Thy Will Be Done 

in Heaven — The prayer that Christ taught us was 
meant to be heard ; God answers it in many various 
degrees. To pray it daily means to aim at it in the 
faith of God's answer. And yet how many earnest 
Christians who are utterly hopeless in regard to it. 
Their surrender to do God's will is ever failing. Is 
not the great reason that they are attempting it in the 
power of a life that is not wholly possessed by Jesus 
Christ? Listen to His Word : '* Lo, I am come to do 
Thy will." All power to do God's will is in Him. 
As we can truly say, Christ liveth in me, we shall 
find His strength is perfected in our weakness. The 
call comes to each believer, as one sanctified in the 
will of God, by the offering of the body of Jesus 
Christ once for all, and perfected for evermore, to 
accept the will of God as done by Christ for us, 
as still being done in us by Him, as God's free gift 
in Christ Jesus. The one thing needed, when the 
heart sees and accepts and loves and vows this do- 
ing of God's will as its one desire, is the faith that 
Jesus does take charge of a surrendered will, and 
that in the power of Him who lives in heaven and 
lives in us, the doing of God's will can become our 
daily life. 



XXV 

DOING THE WILL OF GOD OBTAINS THE 
PROMISE 

" Ye have need of patience, that, having done the will of 
God, ye may receive the promise.'' — Heb. x. 36. 

IT was in a time of very severe trial that this 
Epistle was addressed to the Hebrews. It had 
been to them a bitter disappointment to see the 
nation rejecting their Messiah, and for that rejected 
of God. To have the temple, too, with its Divine 
ordinances of circumcision and sacrifice, set aside, 
was to many a mysterj^ and a cause of deep sorrow. 
In reproach and the spoiling of their goods they 
had had personally to endure the pain of persecu- 
tion. The Epistle was written to comfort them by 
revealing the spiritual glory of Christ's priesthood 
and the salvation He bestowed. And it pointed 
them to the Father, to prove that suffering had 
been the path of all God's saints, and had always 
brought a great recompense of reward. It is in 
this connection that the words come: Ye have 
need of patience, that, having done the will of God, 

159 



i6o Thy Will Be Done 

ye may receive the promise. The promise was 
sure and very precious; the suffering was needful, 
and would be very blessed. The one thing they 
needed was patience in bearing what God sent, and 
waiting what God had promised. And in that time 
of patient waiting they needed just one thing — to see 
that they did the will of God. In a world of sorrow 
and trial the Christian has but this one thing to 
strive after: not only to bear, but to do the will of 
God; that, having done the will of God, ye may 
receive the promise. 

Doing the will of God is the path to the inheri- 
tance. The inheritance owes its Divine glory and 
blessedness to God having willed it. God's will 
working in us can alone fit us for receiving and en- 
joying it. And God's will can work in no other way 
in us as creatures endowed with intelligence and will 
and moral powers, than by our doing it. Not in any 
way as a matter of work or merit, but in the very 
nature and necessity of things the only way of our 
receiving the promise, which has been bestowed of 
grace, is by our doing the will. We have been look- 
ing at the will of God in various aspects — let us 
once again turn to this, one of the most elementary, 
and yet one of the deepest, truths connected with it. 

Having done the will of God. It has been said 



Doing the Will Obtains the Promise i6r 

the highest form of existence is the power of work- 
ing. It is so in God. All His attributes could not 
make Him the glorious God He is, if they were all 
dormant, inactive powers. His love, for instance, 
would be a mere thought or sentiment, not in deed 
and truth. The highest form of human existence 
is even so the power of working ; and, as a creature, 
the highest form of that power can be nothing than 
working out the perfect will of God. God works 
to will and to do in us, and what He works in us we 
work out, doing what He wills and does in us. Such 
doing the will of God is the proof of our entire 
surrender to it, our being truly mastered and pos- 
sessed by it. Such doing the will of God is what 
gives its strength to our inner man, refines and 
spiritualises our whole being, and fits us for being 
here, the abode of the Three-One God (John xiv. 
15, 21, 23), and entering His abode hereafter (Matt, 
vii. 21). Such doing the will of God fits a Chris- 
tian for receiving ever}^ promise. 

It was in the time of suflFering and trial that 
these believers were thus to do the will of God. 
The first concern of most Christians in trouble is 
to be delivered from it. This may not be the chief 
thing. The one great desire ought to be — in noth- 
ing to fail of knowing or doing the will of God. 



1 62 Thy Will Be Done 

This is the secret of strength and true nobility in 
the Christian life. Some think that if under reproach 
or persecution or injustice, evil feelings are roused 
and given way to, there is some excuse for it — 
it cannot be judged too severely — the temptation 
was so great. God's word teaches us differently. 
It regards the Christian so entirely as a man who 
has given up his own will to live wholly for God's 
will, that it says to him, of all trial and temptation 
of whatever nature, seek one thing: not to sin 
against God. Be patient, and see that you do the 
will of God. 

But is not this something beyond human power 
— in every trial ever to think first of God's will, 
and do that? It is indeed something beyond 
human power, but not beyond the power of grace. 
It is just for this that our Lord Jesus came to 
earth, saying: I come to do Thy will, O God! 
and went to the Cross with the cry: Not My will, 
but Thine be done. He lived as an example of 
how we ought to live. He died to set us free from 
the power of sin, and open the path, through death 
to sin and self, to a life for God and His will. He 
ascended to heaven to give His own Holy Spirit, 
that in His power we might, like Him, do the will 
of the Father, 



Doing the Will Obtains the Promise 163 

Alas! that in the Church of Christ the truth 
should be so little known that to do the will of 
God is the first duty of the believer; and, as a 
consequence of this, that there is so little desire 
of the promise and the need of the Holy Spirit 
to teach us God's will in daily life. And still 
further, so little faith in the power of the grace 
of Christ and His Spirit to fit us for the life of do- 
ing the will of God. Men have lost sight of the 
supernatural light that can reveal the will of God in 
its beauty and attractiveness, and make it a joy to do 
it ; and of the supernatural obligation to live wholly 
and entirely for the will of that God who created us, 
and to whom Christ has brought us back ; and of the 
supernatural power, corresponding to the light and 
the obligation, which brings a life in the will of God 
within our reach, because Christ's strength is made 
perfect in our weakness. 

Believer! whatever others say or do, take you 
the word in its simple Divine meaning: ''You 
have need of patience, that, having done the will 
of God, you may receive the promise.'' Beseech 
God, by His Holy Spirit, in the renewing of the 
spirit of your mind, to show you how He would 
have you live wholly in His will. Yield your- 
self to that will in everything you know, and do it. 



1 64 Thy Will Be Done 

Yield yourself to that will in all its Divine love and 
quickening power as it works in you and makes 
you partaker of its inmost nature. Pray, pray, pray, 
until you see increasingly how what Christ re- 
vealed in His life and death is the promise and 
pledge of what God will work in you, and how your 
abiding in Him and your oneness with Him, means 
nothing less than your being called to do the will 
of God as He did it. 



XXVI 

GOD HIMSELF WORKING HIS WILL IN US 

" Now the God of peace, make you perfect in every good 
thing to do His will, working in us that which is well pleas- 
ing in His sight, through Jesus Christ; to whom be the 
glory for ever and ever." — Heb. xiii. 20, 21. 

IN Hebrews we have three passages on the will 
of God. The first, x. 7-10, spoke of that will, 
and Christ's doing of it, as the cause of our re- 
demption — the deep root in which our life stands. 
The second, 10-36, spoke of that will as done 
patiently by us, amid the trials of this earth. The 
third, our present text, shows us the wondrous 
bond of union between the two former: the same 
God who wrought out His will in Christ for our 
redemption, is working out that will in us too. 
What God did in Christ is the pledge of what He 
will do in us too. That Christ did the will of God 
secures our doing that will too. Listen to the won- 
drous teaching. 

Now, the God of peace, who brought again from 
the dead the Great Shepherd of the sheep in the 

165 



1 66 Thy Will Be Done 

blood of the everlasting covenant, even our Lord 
Jesus, make you perfect to do His will. All that is 
said about the Lord Jesus refers to the previous 
teaching of the Epistle. It has taught us what the 
covenant was, what the blood of the covenant, what 
the exaltation to the throne of Christ as the Priest 
King, the Great Shepherd of the sheep. And now 
it says that the God of peace, who did it all, who 
gave Christ to do His will and die on the Cross, 
and then raised Him from the dead, that the same 
God will perfect us to do His will. As much as it 
was God who sent and enabled Christ to do His 
will, and through that perfected Him and perfected 
our salvation, it is God too who will perfect us in 
every good thing to do His will. God's will being 
done in us is to God of the same interest as His 
will done in Christ; He cares for the one as much 
as the other. The same Omnipotence which created 
for Christ a body through the Virgin Mary, and 
empowered Christ — who could do nothing of Him- 
self — to do that will, even to the agony of Geth- 
semane, and the surrender of His Spirit into His 
Father's hand on Calvary, and then raised Him from 
the grave to His own right hand, the same Omnipo- 
tent God is working in you that you may do His 



God Himself Working His Will in Us 167 

will. Oh, for grace to believe this — the God who 
worked all in Christ, even to raising Him from the 
very dead, is working all in us! 

You do not catch it yet. It looks altogether 
too impossible. The difference is too great. The 
difficulties in our sinful nature are too insuperable. 
Come and listen once again. Now, the God of peace, 
who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus 
Christ — what now — do pause, and take in every 
word — make you perfect — in every good thing — to 
do His will! What more could one wish?^ 

And yet, to remove all doubt, there is more. 
There follows : working in us that which is pleasing 
in His sight, through Jesus Christ. The centre 
words, to do His zvill, are welded fast between what 
precedes: God Himself make you perfect in every 
good thing, and what follows — working Himself in 
you that which is pleasing in His sight. How won- 
derful the connection between our doing and God's 
working. He fits us in every good thing to do His 
will, so that the doing of it is really our work, and 
yet at the same time it is His ozvn working in us. 



^ The word perfect here means to repair, to equip, to Ht; 
God fits us for every good thing, and so enables us to do His 
will. 



1 68 Thy Will Be Done 

God fits us for the work, and then works it through 
us. And so all is of God! 

The lessons for which we want to take these 
words into our heart, and which we want to ask 
God to teach us by the Holy Spirit, are three. 
The first is: The one object of the great redemp- 
tion is, to fit us to do God's will here on earth. For 
that we were created; that was God's image and 
likeness in us; that was our fi.tness for fellowship 
with God, and the participation in His rule of the 
world to which we were destined. To redeem and 
bring us back to this, God worked that stupendous 
miracle of power and of love; His Son becoming 
man, that as man He might show us how to do 
God's will, and how by doing it sin could be atoned 
and conquered. For this Christ lives in heaven 
and in our hearts, that through Him God may work 
in us that which is well pleasing in His heart. What 
the sinner needs to know when he is called to re- 
pentance, what the believer needs to be contin- 
ually reminded of and encouraged in, is this : to do 
God's will is what I have been redeemed for. The 
entire failure of so much Christian life is simply 
owing to this, that the Church has not clearly and 
persistently preached the great message, that all 
God's wondrous grace has this one object, to restore 



God Himself Working His Will in Us 169 

us to the original glory of our creation, and make 
it our life to do His will. 

The second lesson is of no less importance — we 
can do God's will because God Himself fits us for 
it, working in us that which is pleasing in His 
sight. 

Alas! how little this is known or believed by 
believers. The call to do all God's will is made 
of none eflfect by the terrible unbelief that says: 
It cannot be; I cannot do it. Men say that they 
believe that all the mysteries of redemption, up 
to Christ's resurrection and exaltation to heaven 
were wrought '' by the working of the strength of 
God's might" (Eph. i. 20). But they do not be- 
lieve, what Scripture affirms as distinctly (Eph. 
i. 19), that the same exceeding greatness of His 
power works in them that believe. Let me implore 
every child of God who would live to do His will, 
to remember : the will of God is so holy and Divine ; 
no one can do it but God Himself. God has given 
thee a renewed will, capable of knowing and de- 
siring, and even delighting in, His will, but not of 
doing it in thine own strength. The work of our will 
is to accept of His will as being indeed what He will 
work in thee. This is indeed our highest glory, that 
God, who, according to His very nature, must work 



lyo Thy Will Be Done 

all in all, will work in us both to will and to do. 
He Himself fits us in every good thing to do His 
will, working Himself in us that which is pleasing 
in His sight. 

The last lesson follows naturally: Our great 
need and our great duty, when we have accepted 
our calling to live only to do His will, is to bow 
before God in continual humility and dependence, 
asking to know fully our utter impotence, and seek- 
ing to trust confidently in His power working in 
us. And with this, to understand that His power 
cannot work freely and fully in us^ except as He 
dwells in us. Jesus said: The Father abiding in 
Me doeth the works. It is " through Jesus Christ " 
God works in us what is pleasing in His sight. 
That is, through Jesus Christ dwelling in the heart, 
by the power of the Holy Ghost, God by a con- 
tinual secret, almighty operation, works out His will 
in us, by fitting us to do it. The one thing needful 
is: a simple, but unceasing and unlimited, faith in 
the indwelling Jesus. Lo, I come, He said. I de- 
light to do Thy will. That is not only for us, but in 
us. He is the Executor of the Father's will, through 
whom it is all carried out. Oh ! let us turn with a 
new consecration to do all God's will, with a new 
faith to God who will work in us the fitness to do it, 



God Himself Working His Will in Us 171 

with a new devotion to Jesus Christ, through whom 
we the sinful, we the impotent, can indeed have 
grace to say too: I delight to do Thy will, O my 
God. 



XXVII 
SUFFERING ACCORDING TO THE WILL OF GOD 

" For so is the will of God, that by well-doing ye should 
put to silence the ignorance of foolish men. If, when ye do 
well, and suffer for it, ye shall take it patiently, this is 
acceptable with God. Because Christ also suffered for you, 
leaving you an example, that ye should follow His steps." — 
I Pet. ii. 15, 20, 21. 

" It is better, if the will of God so will, that ye suffer for 
well-doing, than for evil-doing. Because Christ also suf- 
fered for sins once." — i Pet. iii. 17, 18. 

" Inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings, re- 
joice. Wherefore, let them also that suffer according to 
the will of God commit their souls in well-doing unto a 
faithful Creator." — i Pet. iv. 13, 19. 

BEFORE Peter had received the Holy Spirit, he 
could not understand that suffering had to 
be borne as God's will. When Christ spoke of His 
suffering, he reproved Him, and had to bear the 
rebuke: Get thee behind Me, Satan. When his 
discipleship brought him into danger and suffering, 
he denied his Lord. He could not see that sufifer- 

172 



Suffering According to the Will of God 1 73 

ing was God's will. With Pentecost everything 
was changed. He knew no fear. He rejoiced that 
he was counted worthy to suffer for His name. In 
his Epistle he ever connects Christ's suffering for 
our sins with his example, calling us to suffer like 
Him. Through suft'ering to glory is the keynote of 
his exhortation to the saints. Let us listen to what 
he teaches us of the will of God in suffering. 

The first lesson is : To regard all suffering as the 
will of God for us, '' If the will of God will^ that 
ye suffer for well-doing." " They that suffer accord- 
ing to the will of God.'' He is speaking of the suf- 
fering of injustice at the hands of our fellow-men. 
Very many, who think they are ready to endure trial 
that comes direct from God, find it very hard to 
bear unkind, or hard, or unjust treatment from men. 
And yet it is just here that Christ's teaching and 
example, and all Scripture instruction, call upon us 
to accept and bow to the will of God. Whether it 
be in the most flagrant injustice, and the most ter- 
rible suffering — such as our Lord endured at the 
hands of Caiaphas and Pilate — or the smaller vexa- 
tions that we meet with in daily life from enemies 
or friends, all suffering must be to us the will of 
God. Nothing can come to us without the will of 
God. What is done may be most contrary to the 



174 Thy Will Be Done 

will of God, and the doer most guilty in His sight 
— that it is done to us, that we suffer by it, is God's 
will. And the first duty of the child of God is — 
not to look at the man who does it, to seek to be 
avenged of him, or delivered from his hands, but — 
to recognise and bow beneath it as the Father's will. 
That one thought — it is the Father's will — changes 
our feelings towards it, enables us to accept it as 
a blessing, changes it from an evil into a good. In 
all suffering let the first thought be, to see the 
Father's hand, and count on the Father's help. Then 
no circumstance whatever can for one moment take 
us out of the blessed will of God. 

The second lesson is: Ever to suifer with well- 
doing. In all the three texts the word " well-doing " 
occurs. If we suffer when we do wrong, and take 
it patiently, this is no glory. The one thing we are 
to care for is that, if we suffer, it is not to be for 
wrong-doing, but for well-doing. For it is better, 
if the will of God so will, that ye suffer for well- 
doing than for evil-doing. And also with well-do- 
ing, not allowing the suffering to call forth anything 
that is sinful. That must be our one desire in suf- 
fering. It is caused by sin, it is meant to take away 
sin — how terrible if I make it the occasion of more 
sin, and turn it to the very opposite of what God 



Suffering According to the Will of God 175 

means it to be. But if we suffer when we do well, 
and take it patiently, this is acceptable with God — 
that so by well-doing we put to silence the ignorance 
of foolish men. Men may learn from us what the 
power of Grace is, to soften and to strengthen; 
what the reality is of the heavenly life and joy that 
enables us to bear all loss; and what the blessing 
is of the service of the Divine Master, who can 
make His own path of suffering so attractive and so 
blessed to His followers. And it is in well-doing 
we can commit our souls unto a faithful Creator. 

Here is the third lesson: In suffering to commit 
our souls to God's faithful keeping. What a 
precious privilege! Amid all the temptation suf- 
fering brings, God Himself offers to take charge 
of the keeping of our souls. Going down into the 
darkness of death, our Lord Jesus said : '' Father, 
into Thy hands I commit My Spirit.'' Into every 
dark cloud of suffering into which we enter, we may 
say this too. From all the strife of tongues and the 
pride of man, from all that there is in ourselves of the 
tendency to impatience or anger, to quick judgments 
or unloving dispositions, the faithful Creator can 
keep the soul committed to Him. He who sends 
the suffering as His will, has beforehand provided 
a place of safety, where the blessing of the suffering 



176 Thy Will Be Done 

will assuredly be given. Let us say : " I know in 
whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He 
is able to keep that which I have committed unto 
Him." 

Then comes the last lesson: In all our suffering 
according to the will of God, Christ is our pattern 
and our strength. In all the three chapters Christ 
suffering for our sake is connected with our suf- 
fering for His sake. " Christ also suffered for 
you, leaving you an example — that ye should fol- 
low His steps '' (ii. 2). " It is better that ye suffer 
for well-doing, because Christ also suffered for sins 
once, the righteous for the unrighteous" (iii. 17, 
18). '^Forasmuch as Christ suffered in the flesh, 
arm ye yourselves with the same mind. Insomuch 
as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings, rejoice 
ye . . . because the Spirit of Glory and the Spirit 
of God resteth on you" (iv. I, 13, 14). The suf- 
ferings of believers are as indispensable as are 
those of Christ. They are to be borne in the same 
spirit. They are the means of fellowship with 
Him, and conformity to His image. Christ Jesus 
accepted and bore all suffering, of whatever nature, 
great or small, whether coming in the ordinary 
course of events or specially devised against Him- 
self, as the will of God. He endured all, as the 



Suffering According to the Will of God 177 

necessary result of sin, in submission to the will 
of the Father who sent it, as the school in which He 
was to prove that His will was one with the Father's, 
and that the Father's will was over all. 

Christ is our pattern, because He is our life. In 
time of suffering proof is given that the Spirit of 
Glory and the Spirit oi God rests upon us. Oh, 
that all believers, who desire to live wholly to the 
will of God, might understand how much depends 
upon their recognising God's will in all suffering, 
and bearing all according to the will of God ! And 
might understand, too, how impossible it is to dis- 
connect Christ's sufferings for us from our's for 
Him. He suffered for us as our Head, in whom 
we are made alive. We can only suffer for Him 
as He lives in us. The attempt to do or bear the 
will of God aright, as long as we are living on a 
different level from that on which Christ lived, must 
be failure. It is only where the whole-hearted sur- 
render to live and die for the will of God as He did, 
possesses the soul that the mighty power of His 
Love, and Grace, and Spirit can do their wonders 
in the life. 



XXVIII 

LIVING TO THE WILL OF GOD 

" That ye no longer should live the rest of your time in 
the flesh to the lusts (desires) of men, but to the will of 
God/' — I Pet. iv. 2. 

THE believers to whom Peter writes needed to 
be reminded that there is a twofold possi- 
bility in the Christian life. It is possible — alas, how 
often it is done ! — even after conversion, still to live 
to the lusts of men, desiring and seeking what men 
in the world seek. It is possible, on the other hand, 
to turn entirely away from the living to the de- 
sires of men, and wholly live to the will of God, even 
as Christ had done. He had written : '' Foras- 
much then as Christ suffered in the flesh, arm ye 
yourselves also with the same mind; for he that 
hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin,'' 
and then continues, as the fruit of being armed 
with the same mind as Christ, and having, through 
suflfering in the flesh, been brought to cease from 
sin, '' Live no longer to the desires of men, but to 

178 



Living to the Will of God 179 

the will of God." Every Christian stands between 
the two contending forces. The unceasing influence 
of human nature and its desires, the example of the 
men of the world, the whole current of human 
society, draws him to live to the desires of men. 
Blessed the man who has yielded to the power of 
Christ and His Cross, who has armed himself with 
the same mind, at any cost rather to sufifer than to 
sin, and now lives even as Christ, not to the will of 
man, but to the will of God. Blessed, thrice blessed, 
the life in which the purpose of Christ's coming 
is being realised, and which is now wholly yielded 
to, wholly inspired and controlled by the will of 
God. 

We are approaching the close of our study of 
the will of God. We have had occasion to look 
at it from almost every possible side. The desire, 
the hope, the purpose, to live only to the will of 
God, may have been wakened or strengthened in 
many a heart. And yet there is the painful sense 
of failure, and a consciousness that there is some 
hidden trouble that hinders the possession of what 
appears so clearly promised in God's Word. Let 
me try to gather up all the teaching we have 
had, and to point out, in the simplest way possible, 
what appear to be the steps that lead up to the life 



i8o Thy Will Be Done 

Scripture teaches us to pray for and expect — per- 
fect and complete in all the will of God. 

1. I must mention first what often comes last in 
experience : To live to God's will is impossible except 
as we live in close and abiding fellowship with Jesus 
Christ, It is He who proclaimed : '' Lo, I am come 
to do Thy will, O God/' He not only had to do it 
alone on Calvary: the work He began there He 
carries on in heaven. To-day, still, it is "through 
Him '' alone that God works His will in us (Heb. 
xiii. 21 ). It is impossible to bear or do God's will 
as Christ did, except as we have the same mind that 
was in Him. And we cannot have the same mind, 
except as we are wholly given up to Him^ have Him 
living in us, and seek to live in His fellowship. It 
is the living presence and power of Christ in the 
heart that enables us to do God's will from the heart. 
You cannot demand of a sickly life that it shall do 
the work of a healthy man. It is where the suffi- 
ciency of Christ's grace is known, and our strength 
is made perfect in weakness, because His power 
rests upon us, that we can truly live to God. 

2. To live to God's zvill demands that there he a 
clear and full surrender of every movement of our 
life to that will. — It is in the little things, in the 
natural, innocent things in which we do not see 



Living to the Will of God 1 8 1 

how God's will comes in, that failure takes its rise. 
We need to pray very earnestly for a spiritual in- 
sight into the blessed truth, that every power, and 
every moment, and every movement of our life 
must be in harmony with that will. We are so 
slow of apprehending what this means, that, unless 
there be patient, persevering prayer, and a very 
docile waiting for the Spirit's teaching, we may 
struggle on for years without grasping what ought 
to be an elementary truth — that God's will must rule 
our life, as it ruled the life of Christ Jesus — that it 
must all be according to the will of God. 

3. To live to God's zuill it is essential that what- 
ever we know to be according to that will must be 
done at once. — Very often there comes to us a subtle 
temptation that, until we have power to do all God's 
will, a small failure, additional to those which ap- 
pear a necessity, is not of such consequence. Or 
that, as long as we have not received some special 
endov/ment of power, it is needless and vain to at- 
tempt a perfect obedience. Let us beware of giving 
way to such thoughts. xA.ll increase of grace and 
strength in the Christian life stands under the law 
of faithfulness in little things. Whatever you know 
to be the will of God, little or great, do it at once. 
If you are not sure, do the nearest to what you 



i82 Thy Will Be Done 

know to be right. It is in doing what we know 
that we give proof of our integrity, and are pre- 
pared to receive more grace. 

4. Learn also to do all your ordinary works as the 
will of God. — There is such a vast range of ordinary 
everyday duty or drudgery that appears to have little 
direct connection with the will of God, and uncon- 
sciously separated from it. Beware of giving way 
to this. Study Paul and Peter's wonderful teaching 
to the ill-used slaves of their day (see chaps, xix. 
and xxvii.) . They call upon them to perform all their 
service, and bear all their sufferings from hard 
masters, as God's will! And this to be done from 
the heart as unto the Lord! When once all the 
work of our daily calling is seen to be God's will, 
and is done heartily for His sake, it need no longer 
be a hindrance; it will become a great help in en- 
abling us to live wholly to the will of God. 

5. Let no secret misapprehension in regard to the 
doctrine of our entire impotence, and the impossi- 
bility of a life truly well pleasing to God, hinder you, 
— Jesus Christ has said : " My grace is sufficient for 
you, for all I ask of you, for all you have to do." 
Our nature is utterly corrupt and impotent; in 
our flesh dwelleth no good thing. Living to God's 
will is only possible, is truly possible, by the power 



Living to the Will of God 183 

of Jesus Christ resting on us and working in us 
through the Holy Spirit. Do get firm hold of the 
truth that God's Spirit dwells in you as the power 
for you to do God's will. The grace of the Spirit 
is only known as you act it out, that is, as in faith 
you try and do what appears too great to your weak- 
ness. Only believe, is the law too for living to the 
will of God. 

6. To live to God's will you need to wait daily for 
the Divine guidance of the Holy Spirit to make that 
will known to you. — Many pray for Divine strength 
to do God's will, but do not think of a Divine light 
first to know God's will. God's will as taught by 
men or books has not the power to influence. A 
supernatuial teaching wakens the need, and gives 
the promise, of a supernatural power. The will of 
God is not a number of laws and rules. It is a liv- 
ing light and power, revealed in fellowship with 
Him. The believer who would truly live to the 
will of God in all things, will deeply feel the need 
of a Divine guidance, leading him day by day in the 
path and the steps of our Lord Jesus. Oh, let us 
no longer live to the will of man, but to the will of 
God! 



XXIX 
DOING GOD'S WILL, THE SECRET OF ABIDING 

'* If any man love the world, the love of the Father is 
not in him. And the world passeth away, and the lust 
thereof : but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.'' 
—I John ii. 15, 17. 

HERE w^e have once again the contrast betv^een 
the tv^o great powers that contend for mas- 
tery over man. We saw, in Rom. xii. 2, how the 
great danger that threatens the consecrated man, 
and makes a Hfe in God's will impossible, comes 
from the side of worldly conformity. And, in Gal. 
i. 4, how the one great aim of God's will in the 
death of Christ was to deliver us from this present 
evil wm-ld. The irreconcilable hostility of the two 
principles is brought out here with equal force. " If 
any man love the world, the love of the Father is riot 
in him." Freedom from the love of the world by 
the love of the Father, utterly expelling it, is the 
law of the normal Christian life. And the exercise 
and discipline by which the true position is to be 
maintained, with the love of the Father and not the 

184 



The Secret of Abiding 185 

love of the world filling the heart and life, is the 
doing the will of God : '' He that doeth the will of 
God abideth for ever '' — abideth unchangeably in 
God and an unchangeable love. 

What sacred associations there are connected with 
that word abiding! Abiding in Christ and in His 
love (John xv.) ; abiding in the Son and in the 
Father (i John ii. 24, 28); God and Christ, the 
truth and the anointing abiding in us (i John ii. 
14, 2^', iii. 24). The chief thought is permanent, 
steadfast, immovable continuance in the place and 
the blessing secured to us in Christ and God. The 
great secret of the world is its transitoriness — it 
passeth away with all its glory. And all who are of 
it partake of its vanity and uncertainty. And just 
as far as the Christian breathes its spirit, and allows 
its. love a place in his heart, he loses the power of 
abiding. All failure in abiding, all lack of perma- 
nence and perseverance in the Christian life, can 
have no other cause than that the spirit and life 
of the world are robbing the soul of its real and only 
strength. The Word and Will of God are unchange- 
able and eternal: he that doeth the will of God 
abideth for ever. As a man does the will of God, 
and in doing appropriates it, feeds upon and assim- 
ilates it, its very essence enters into his being, and 



1 86 Thy Will Be Done 

he becomes partaker of its Divine strength and un- 
changeableness. As the life of God is, so is His 
will, without variableness and shadow of turning. 
And as the will of God is taken up into the life of 
the behever^, it too is changed into the likeness of the 
Divine life, and becomes freed from all the variable- 
ness and every shadow of turning which is the mark 
of this world. " This world passeth away ; he that 
doeth the will of God abideth for ever." 

" He that doeth the will of God." It is by doing 
that the will of God enters into us, and communi- 
cates its own Divine unchangeableness. The revela- 
tion by the Spirit, the knowledge and contempla- 
tion of the love and adoration of the will of God — 
all these have their place and value. But it is not 
until we have really done, and are continually doing, 
the will of God, that it has really mastered us, con- 
quered every enemy, and transformed us into the 
perfect likeness to itself. It is as the doing of the 
Father's will becomes our meat, that is, the satisfac- 
tion of our soul's hunger, and our nourishment, 
that God Himself becomes the strength of our life. 
It is only then that man is brought back to his 
original glory. He was created with a will, that 
into it he might receive the will of God, that God 
might work His will into him, and so man, in work- 



The Secret of Abiding 187 

ing that will out again, might become the partner 
and fellow-worker with God in all His works. Jesus 
Christ, as man, restored human nature to its ideal 
destiny, and proved what blessedness and glory it is 
to live only to do the will of God. And redeemed 
men receive the Spirit of Jesus Christ that they, 
even as He, might find their life in accepting and 
living and doing nothing but the will of God. As 
God's will is the only power that upholds and se- 
cures the existence of the universe, so that will, 
done by the believer, is the one security that he never 
shall be moved. The whole of redemption, all that 
it reveals of pardoning and sanctifying and preserv- 
ing grace, has this as its aim and its crown — that 
man should find his blessedness and his fellowship 
with God, his likeness to Him, in doing His will. 
" He that doeth the will of God abideth for ever." 
Blessed abiding! How often believers have 
mourned and wondered that there was so little abid- 
ing peace and joy in their life — that the abiding 
in Christ and His love was so fluctuating and uncer- 
tain. They knew not how near the answer lay as 
to the cause : " He that doeth the will of God 
abideth for ever.'^ They never noticed how dis- 
tinctly our Lord had laid down this as the one con- 
dition of abiding in Him : " If ye keep My command- 



1 88 Thy Will Be Done 

ments, ye shall abide in My love, even as I kept the 

commandments of My Father, and abide in His 

love/' Could words make it plainer that obedience, 

doing His will, is the secret of abiding? And that if, 

instead of occupying ourselves with the abiding as 

?the object of direct desire and faith and prayer, and 

i effort, we were to give up ourselves wholly to keep 

, the commandments and do the will, the abiding 

would come of itself, because it would be given us 

by a secret power from on High. " He that doeth 

the will of God abideth for ever,'' and will always 

and unceasingly abide. 

It is to be feared that in the teaching of the 
Church of Christ, and in the life of the great ma- 
jority of believers, the doing of the will of the Father 
has not that overwhelming prominence which it 
had in the life and teaching of Christ, as in the 
purpose of the Father. Any revival that is really to 
affect the spiritual life and elevate the standard of 
Christian living, must be a revival of holy living, 
with the vindication of God's claim that every child 
of His should give Himself to do God's will on earth 
as it is done in heaven. When once God's claim is 
fully admitted, and, without any reservation, uncon- 
ditionally accepted, light will be given as to the 
Divine guidance that will lead us to it, the Divine 



The Secret of Abiding 189 

power which makes it possible, the Divine certainty 
that it shall be done. Everything depends upon the 
simple and whole-hearted acceptance of the great 
truth, that to be brought back to do the will of 
God is the one thing we have been redeemed for, 
and that doing that will is, on earth as in heaven, 
with us, as with our Lord Jesus, the one secret of 
abiding in the love of God. 



XXX 

PRAYING ACCORDING TO GOD'S WILL 

" And this is the boldness which we have toward Him, 
that, if we ask anything according to His will, He heareth 
us. And if we know that He heareth us, whatsoever we 
ask, we know that we have the petitions which we have 
asked of Him." — i John v. 14-15. 

GOD works out His will through the willing and 
doing of His people. He works in them, all 
unconsciously to them, to will and to do. While 
they study His will in His Word, and take it up 
into their wills and lives and work it out, He is all 
the while working it out through them. It is a 
heart and life filled with the love of God's will that 
becomes the prepared instrument through which 
God can do His work. 

It is with prayer as with work. As God has 
taken up into His eternal purpose the co-operation 
and the labour of His people, so their prayers too. 
These have their human origin in our desires as 
wakened by our need or by God's promises, and are 
yet God's own working in us. They cannot effect 

190 



Praying According to God's Will 191 

any change in the will of God, for they are God's 
will realising itself through us, and their first con- 
dition is that they must be according to God's will. 
They may indeed, and do, effect a change to what 
appears to be God's will, in what is His will for a 
time, or as a preliminary to something higher ; their 
real power consists in their being according to God's 
will, because God works out His will as much 
through our prayers as our works. 

The question has often caused much difficulty: 
How can I know that my prayers are according to 
the will of God? The question lies at the very 
root of our prayer life, as well as of a life in the 
will of God. It is not easy to give an exhaustive 
answer. And yet it may be possible to give sug- 
gestions that will enable thoughtful Christians to 
find the answer that meets their own case. The 
Holy Spirit, where He is to reveal the will of God, 
where He is too to help us in prayer, must be our 
Teacher. 

Let us, first of all, see that we understand the 
words, " According to His will," correctly. Many 
connect them exclusively with '' anything " : the 
thing asked must be according to His will. But 
there is something more important than this — not 
only the thing asked for. but the disposition and 



192 Thy Will Be Done 

character of the asker must be according to God's 
will. In this last lies the real secret of power in 
prayer. Two Christians both ask for something 
according to the will of God. He gives it to one 
and not to another. And why? Because the ask- 
ing of the one was different from the other. We 
must connect the words, " According to His will," 
with asking. That will include both that the thing 
asked and the spirit of the asking be in harmony 
with God's will. 

That the latter is of primary importance is evi- 
dent from our Lord's teaching of His disciples. He 
continually connected the answer to prayer with 
their state. They must forgive, they must be merci- 
ful, they must be humble, they must be believing, 
they must ask in His name, they must abide in Him 
in keeping His commandments, and His words 
abide in them ; their life must be according to God's 
will. If they loved Him, and kept His command- 
ments, He would pray the Father for them. Only 
the man whose life and conduct, whose heart and 
disposition, is according to God's will, can ask 
according to His will. So James speaks of the 
fervent, effectual prayer of the righteous man. And 
John says, " Whatever we ask we receive, because 
we kept His commandment." It is the life that 



Praying According to God's Will 193 

prays; the prayer has power according to the life; 
a life according to God^s will can ask according to 
God's will. 

One great reason of this is that the man who 
lives according to God's will is able spiritually to 
discern, what he may ask for. A Christian may 
take some promise of God's word, say, for the con- 
version of sinners, and begin and pray for some 
one in the mere power of human love, and without 
seeking at all to be led by the Spirit into the faith 
that enables him to pray successfully. It is simply 
a matter of human will; I would like the con- 
version of this friend. God wills that all should 
be saved; I will ask it. While there is no thought 
of that abiding in Christ through obedience to which 
the promise of an answer has been given. This 
is not asking according to the will of God, in the 
deep consciousness of dependence on the Holy Spirit, 
in that true obedient abiding in Christ Jesus, which 
alone is truly asking in His Name. Doing is the 
only way to knowing the will of God, and there- 
fore the only way of asking according to His will. 
As long as I only desire to know God's will with 
regard to certain things I desire or need, I may find 
it difficult to know it. A life yielded to and moulded 
by the will of God will know what and how to pray. 



194 Thy Will Be Done 

A heart seeking to be '' filled with the knowledge 
of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understand- 
ing," and striving fervently '' to stand perfect and 
complete in all the will of God/' will be able joy- 
fully to appropriate the promise, '' This is the bold- 
ness we have toward Him, that if we ask anything 
according to His will, He heareth us." 

Let us try and learn the lessons. Boldness in 
prayer comes from the assurance that both the spirit 
of asking and the thing we ask are according to the 
will of God. ... In all our prayers that we have 
learnt from His Word, let us take time to realise 
that they are indeed according to God's loving, 
mighty will, and therefore sure to be heard. . . . 
Let us remember how essentially one our lives and 
our prayers are, and live wholly to God's will — that 
will ensure our praying according to His will. . . . 
Let us pray first and wait for the things that God 
has clearly revealed to be His will, things that 
concern His love and kingdom and glory — that will 
give us liberty with the lesser things that concern 
our interests. . . . Only the Holy Spirit in the 
spirit of prayer can lead us into the will of God, — 
as we wait on Him even in the things we know to 
be according to God's will. He can give us Divine 
assurance in regard to things that no human reason 



Praying According to God's Will 195 

could believe beforehand to be God's will. . . . 
Let our first desire in regard to every petition ever 
be: Lord, teach me how to pray only according to 
Thy will. 

God's will is at first a deep hidden mystery. He 
that lives to that will as far as he knows it, may 
count upon being led deeper into it as the manifesta- 
tion of a holy, mighty, infinite goodness. Let me 
give myself to it as to Infinite Love. God works 
out His will equally by the works and the prayers of 
His people. Yield yourself equally without reserve 
to that will in working as in praying, in praying 
as in working. The absolute joyful surrender of 
our life to that will, in full obedience and in perfect 
truth, gives boldness in doing and in asking. And 
this text, instead of being a stumbling-block, will 
give us new joy and confidence in prayer, because 
the prayer according to the will of God must pre- 
vail. 



XXXI 

THE GLORY OF GOD'S WILL 

''They cast their crowns before the throne, saying, 
" Worthy art Thou, our Lord and our God, to receive the 
glory ^ and the honour, and the power ; for Thou didst create 
all things, and because of Thy will they were, and were 
created." — Rev. iv. lo-ii. 

IN chapter four of the Book of Revelation we 
have the glory of God as Creator. The living 
creatures that are in the midst of the throne, and 
round about the throne have no rest^ day nor night, 
as they sing, '' Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God, 
the Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come/' 
As they show forth the glory of the Divine Person 
as Him who liveth for ever and ever, the four and 
twenty elders fall down and worship Him in His 
works, and, casting their crowns before the throne, 
cry out, " Worthy art Thou to receive the glory 
and honour, for Thou didst create all things, and, 
because of Thy will they were, and were created." 
Then follows in chapter five the glory of God as 
Redeemer, where the song of the ransomed, 

196 



The Glory of God's Will 197 

'' Worthy art Thou," and of the angel hosts, 
" Worthy is the Lamb," is followed by the adora- 
tion of all creatures, '' Blessing, honour, glory, be to 
Him that sitteth on the throne, and to the Lamb, 
for ever." Midway between the worship of God in 
the glory of His Divine Being as the Thrice Holy 
and Everliving One, and His glory of redemption 
with the Lamb in the midst of the throne, comes 
the glory of His Divine will as the Creator of all. 
'' Worthy art Thou to receive the glory, for Thou 
hast created all things, and, because of Thy will, 
they were created." Our study of the will of God 
would be incomplete if we did not learn the place 
its worship has in heaven, and, from that, the place 
its worship ought to have in our hearts. 

In heaven, where all veils are taken aw^ay, where 
everything is seen in the light of God, and God is 
known, the elders, at the thought that God has 
been pleased to will creation into existence, fall 
down on their faces in worship, cast their crowns 
before the throne, and give Him glory because of 
His will. God's glory shines out in His works. 
The connecting link between the glory of His 
Divine Person and of the works He has made is His 
will. This is the highest glory of creation, that the 
God of all glory has w^iiled it, that it is the ex- 



198 Thy Will Be Done 

pression and embodiment of His all-perfect and 
almighty will, and so bears on it the stamp of His 
Divine glory. The glory of the Creator and the 
glory of the creature unite in the glory of the 
Divine will, the connecting link between the two. 
In heaven, creation is seen to be nothing but in 
every detail the manifestation of the presence, and 
power, and goodness of God. And the heavenly 
beings, as the mouthpiece and interpreter of crea- 
tion, cease not to give glory to this All-creating Will. 
And it is because they see the glory of God's will, 
and adore it, that they delight in doing it as it is 
done in heaven. 

If we are to do God's will on earth as it is done 
in heaven, we need the same spirit of adoration and 
worship. Each of us needs to have our heart opened 
to the inconceivably wondrous thought, '' Because 
of God's will I have, and am what I am. God has 
willed me into existence. That will maintains me 
every moment. In virtue of that will I am His re- 
deemed child. On that will I can count to carry 
out its purpose and effect its object in me. Here 
I am, the workmanship of the glorious will of the 
Thrice Holy and Everliving God, as His handi- 
work partaking of and manifesting His glory. 
Every moment of my existence, every power of 



The Glory of God*s Will 199 

my being, may be the embodiment, the manifesta- 
tion of God's will. Surely if our eyes and hearts 
are opened to see this, we too would fall prostrate 
and worship. '' Thou art worthy to receive the 
glory, for because of Thy will we were created, and 
are what we are.'' And if we have as yet no crowns 
to cast before the throne, each of us has that which 
is as the crown of his being — his w^ill, his heart, 
his life, his love, to offer to Him who sits upon the 
throne, as we ever say again. Thou art worthy to 
receive the glory, whose will has made us the ob- 
jects of Thy creating and redeeming love. 

It is to show forth in us the glory of His will 
that God created us. Does not this thought at the 
close of our meditations give new urgency to the 
call to live to the will of God? You remember 
how in our opening chapter we saw what the four 
great aspects are under which God's will is revealed 
to us. In regard to each of these, this adoring ac- 
knowledgment that we owe our being to God's 
will, will enable us all the better to give that will 
the place and the honour to which it has a claim. 
There is God's will in Providence. As I worship 
the will that brought me forth, and never for a 
moment ceases its work in me, and connect every 
trial that in Providence it allows to come to me, I 



200 Thy Will Be Done 

shall be enabled to rejoice even in tribulation, and 
to bear all as part of that blessed will whose I am, 
and whom I serve. There is God's will in His 
Precepts, As I see how these have their origin in 
the will of Creating Love, and are the guides to that 
co-operation with Him which will ensure His per- 
fecting His work in me, my whole heart welcomes 
every command with the same prostrate worship as 
that with which it gives glory to Him who sits on 
the throne. There is God's will in His Promises. 
These, too, acquire new preciousness, and certainty, 
and power, as so many assurances to an intelligent 
faith that the will that created and upholds all, 
cares in the minutest detail for our feebleness and 
need, and provides sufficient grace for a perfect 
correspondence on our part to what it is working in 
us. And then there is God's will in His eternal 
world-wide Purpose. The vision of the will that 
embraces all creation, has made me part of it, has 
made His own glory dependent on its and my own 
destiny, enlarges my heart to feel that my true and 
only glory is to yield myself a willing instrument 
to its service, and to live only that that will may tri- 
umph throughout the whole earth. 

Oh, the glory of the will of God! In Him who 
sits upon the throne! In the Universe which He 



The Glory of God's Will aoi 

created to shew forth that will ! In the heavenly 
hosts who worship before the throne, where that 
will is enthroned in glory! In the Beloved Son, 
who came as man to do that will upon earth ! In 
the heart of the believer, who has yielded his life 
to be conformed to it! In the Church, through 
which that will is working out its eternal purpose 
in the world! Oh, the glory of the will of God! 
Let us gaze, and worship, and give glory to God, 
until the will of God rule on the throne of our heart 
as on the throne of heaven, and be done in our life 
on earth as it is done in heaven. 

Lord Jesus, who taught us to pray " Thy will be 
done, as in heaven, so on earth," we look to Thee! 
Oh, teach us to live thus! 



Mar-ie l©oi 



DEC 4 1900 



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